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AUTHOR: 


PERRY,  RALPH  BARTON 


TITLE: 


PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF 
IDEALS 

PLACE: 

NEW  YORK 

DATE: 

1918 


\ 


109 
P429e 


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Perry,  Ralph  Biirlon,  1^7(;-1957. 

The  present  conflict  of  ideals;  a  study  of  the  philosophical 
backfriT.und  of  the  world  war,  by  Ralph  Barton  Periy  ... 
New  York  ^etc.j  Longmans,  Green  and  co.   1922   cclQlSa 

2p.  1.,  «li-xlil,  549p.    22}  cm. 

The  foUowln;;:  lectures  were  delivered  at  the  Unlversltv  of  Cali- 
fornia while  I  had  the  honor  and  good  fortune  to  be  lecturer  on* the 
Molls  fo-  r.datlon  from  January  to  May  of  the  present  year.  A  com- 
panion V   hime  to  Present  philosophical  tendencies,    c/.  Pref. 


Gopv" 


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Jl.  Philosophy,  .Alodern.     2.  National  characteristics.        i.  Title. 


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1922  CC19183 
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in  tf)e  Citp  of  i^eto  gorfe 

THE  LIBRARIES 


.1 


LIBRARY  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


From  the  library  of 

Margaret  Ladd-Franklin 


( 


THE   PRESENT 
CONFLICT  OF   IDEALS 


II 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT 

OF  IDEALS 


A  STUDY  OF  THE   PHILOSOPHICAL 
BACKGROUND  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR 


Present  Philosophical  Tendencies 

A  CRITICAL  SURVEY  OF  NATURALISM, 
IDEALISM,  PRAGMATISM  AND  REALISM 
TOGETHER  WITH  A  SYNOPSIS  OF  THE 
PHILOSOPHY    OF    WILLIAM  JAMES 


BY 

RALPH  BARTON  PERRY 

PROFESSOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 
IN  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 


Second  Impression 
8vo.    Pages  xv  +  382 


BY 

RALPH  BARTON  PERRY 

Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Harvard  University 


Longmans,  Green  and  Co. 


LONGMANS,    GREEN    AND    CO. 

FOURTH  AVENUE  &  30TH  STREET,  NEW  YORK 

39    PATERNOSTER    ROW,    LONDON 

BOMBAY,  CALCUTTA,  AND  MADRAS 

I918 


« 


Copyright,  1918,  by 
LONGMANS,  GREEN  AND  CO. 


J 


en 
to 


00 


PREFACE 

The  following  lectures  were  delivered  at  the  University  of 
California  while  I  had  the  honor  and  good  fortune  to  be 
Lecturer  on  the  Mills  Foundation  from  January  to  May  of 
the  present  year.  I  am  publishing  them  in  virtually  the 
same  form  as  that  in  which  I  dehvered  them,  thus  perpetuat- 
ing my  grateful  sense  of  an  interested  and  friendly  audience. 
I  claim  neither  originality  nor  profound  scholarship;  but  have 
the  hope  that  this  assembhng  and  formulation  of  ideas  that 
are  now  in  the  air,  may  have  some  present  value  for  those 
who  are  trying,  as  I  am,  to  understand  the  deeper  issues  that 
underlie  the  war.  I  have  thought  that  this  book  might  also 
serve  as  a  companion  volume  to  my  Present  Philosophical 
Tendencies,  There  I  have  dealt  mainly  with  the  techni- 
calities and  fundamentals;  here  I  have  dealt  with  the  moral, 
emotional,  political  and  religious  imphcations.  In  order 
that  the  two  books  may  be  used  together,  I  have  followed  a 
similar  order  of  topics:  discussing  first  (Chapters  III-XII), 
aspects  of  naturalism;  second  (Chapters  XIII-XIX),  aspects 
of  idealism;  third  (Chapters  XX-XXIV),  aspects  of  prag- 
matism; and  fourth  (Chapter  XXV),  the  practical  implica- 
tions of  realism.  The  remainder  of  the  book  consists  of  an 
attempt  to  relate  these  tendencies  to  the  conflicting  national 
ideals  of  the  present  war.  I  desire  to  express  my  thanks  to 
Professor  A.  L.  Locke  of  Howard  University  for  his  assistance 
in  the  reading  of  proof. 


WASraNGTON,  D.  C, 

August  15, 1918. 


RALPH  BARTON  PERRY. 


iii 


CONTENTS 


Page 

CHAPTER  I.    Introduction i 

I.  Object  of  the  Present  Work i 

II.  Order  of  Topics 6 

CHAPTER  II.    Our  Actions  and  Our  Professions lo 

I.  The  Need  of  Professing  Reasons  for  Action n 

II.  Profession  as  a  Mask  for  Impulse i4 

III.  Why  We  Justify  Our  Actions i6 

1.  For  Personal  Support i6 

2.  For  Social  Support i7 

CHAPTER  III.    The  Alien  World 21 

I.  The  Cosmic  Picture  of  Materialism 23 

II.  Man  as  a  Part  of  Nature 26 

III.  The  Utility  of  Superstition 27 

IV.  Secular  Moralism 28 

CHAPTER  IV.    Despair  and  Consolation 31 

I.  Pessimism  and  Misanthropy 3^ 

II.  The  Contemplation  of  Nature 3^ 

in.  The  Compensatory  Imagination 4i 

CHAPTER  V.    The  Cult  of  Science 45 

I.  The  Method  of  Science 45 

1.  Disinterestedness 4^ 

2.  Appeal  to  Experience 4^ 

3.  Description 4^ 

4.  The  Cult  of  Scientific  Method 47 

II.  The  Revolt  against  Tradition 49 

1.  Art  and  Literature 5® 

2.  Decadence 5' 

3.  The  Cult  of  Veracity 52 

III.  Agnosticism 54 

IV.  Power  and  Progress  through  Science 57 

V 


I 


vi  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

Page 

CHAPTER  VI.    The  Science  of  Man 63 

I.  The  Scientific  Method  in  Morals  and  Religion 63 

1.  Empiricism  and  Experimentalism  in  Ethics 63 

2.  Modifications  of  Utilitarianism 64 

3.  Comparative  Ethics 65 

4.  The  Science  of  Religion 67 

II.  Psychologism 69 

1.  The  Mechanism  of  the  Mind 69 

2.  The  Cult  of  Sensibility 71 

CHAPTER  VII.    The  Discovery  of  Society 75 

I.  The  Social  Interests  of  the  Individual 76 

II.  Social  Forces 78 

m.  Society  as  a  Distinct  Entity 81 

1.  Morality  as  a  Social  Fact 83 

2.  Progress  and  Reform 84 

3.  The  Social  Will  and  the  State 86 

CHAPTER  VIII.    Socialism 87 

I.  Philanthropic  Socialism 89 

1.  Its  Ethical  Basis 89 

2.  Emphasis  on  the  Economic  Motive 90 

n.  Militant  or  Scientific  SociaUsm 03 

1.  General  Exposition g^ 

2.  Economic  Determinism g^ 

3.  Opposition  to  Religion gg 

CHAPTER  IX.    Democracy  and  Humanity loi 

I.  Science  and  Democracy jqi 

1.  Social  Democracy  and  the  Cult  of  Science loi 

2.  Social  Democracy  and  the  Results  of  Science 103 

3.  Science  and  Political  Democracy 105 

II.  The  Great  Society jq^ 

1.  Economic  Internationalism 107 

2.  The  Humanitarian  Motive jog 

3.  The  Cultural  Motive j  jq 

III.'iThe  Religion  of  Humanity m 

CHAPTER  X.    Evolutionism:  Spencer  and  Darwin ii6 

I.  The  Conception  of  Evolution j  jg 

1.  Basal  Idea ^^^ 

2.  Varying  Factors jjg 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  vil 

Page 

II.  The  Spencerian  Ethics  of  Evolution 121 

1.  The  General  Law 121 

2.  Ideal  Conduct  in  the  Evolved  Society 122 

3.  Natural  Reactions  and  Laissez-faire 124 

III.  Darwinism  versus  Ethics jjy 

1.  The  Darwinian  Ideas J27 

2.  Civilization  and  the  State  of  Nature 128 

CHAPTER  XL  The  Ethics  of  Darwinism 132 

I.  The  Darwinian  Theory  of  Progress j^j 

1.  Civilization  and  Degeneration 132 

2.  Competition  and  the  Reward  of  Merit 135 

3.  Struggle  between  Social  Groups 138 

II.  The  New  Ethics .^.....,...  140 

1.  Might  is  Right j .  2 

2.  The  Ideal  of  Might .!.!.*!.!.*!.*  143 

III.  Darwinism  and  Socialism 1^5 

1.  Class  Struggle j^- 

2.  The  Transformation  of  Struggle 148 

CHAPTER  XII.    The  Gospel  of  Nietzsche 150 

I.  Nietzsche's  Relation  to  Evolution j^q 

II.  The  Attack  upon  the  Existing  Code jgA 

1.  Moral  Codes j  - . 

2.  Slave  Morality j  ^5 

3.  The  Assault  on  Christianity 1^3 

III.  The  New  Gospel .!.!.!...!..  160 

1.  The  Spirit  of  Reform 160 

2.  The  Will  to  Power .........!!!!!!.!!!!  160 

3.  Hardness j^j 

4.  The  Afl5rmation  of  Life 163 

IV.  Social  and  Political  Implications 165 

1.  Class  Subordination 15^ 

2.  Cosmopolitanism i5y 

3.  The  Superman jgg 

CHAPTER  XIII.    The  Appeal  to  Moral  and  Religious  Facts...  173 

I.  Moralism j^- 

n.  The  Code  of  Conscience  and  the  Rule  of  God 176 

HI.  Moral  Self -Determination  and  Individualism 177 

IV.  Altruism  and  Optimism j-g 

V.   Kantian  Formalism  and  the  World  of  Faith 180 

VI.  The  Religious  Experience jg^ 


^•::  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

V"*  Page 

1 88 
CHAPTER  XIV.    Phenomenalism  and  Panpsychism 

i88 

I.  Phenomenalism 

II.  SpirituaUstic  Agnosticism ^^^ 

III.  Panpsychism 

1.  View  of  Nature 

2.  Moral  Implications 

3.  Religious  Implications 

IV.  Meanings  of  Idealism ^^ 

201 
CHAPTER  XV.    Personal  Idealism 

I.  Motives  and  Sources 

1.  Moralism 

2.  Pluralism 

^    Voluntarism  versus  Intellectualism ^05 

O  X  T 

II.  Metaphysical  Individualism 

1.  The  Personal  and  Immortal  Soul 211 

21^ 

2.  Freedom 

III.  Theism ^^^ 

1.  Problem  of  Evil ^^^ 

2.  God ^'^ 

rV.  The  Tendency  to  Absolutism ^^° 

CHAPTER  XVI.    Kant  AND  THE  Absolute 220 

I.  The  Kantian  Dualism ^^^ 

1.  Knowledge  and  Faith 221 

2.  The  Two  Reabns ^23 

II.  From  Kant  to  Metaphysics 225 

1.  The  Ideals  of  Reason 225 

2.  The  Primacy  of  Practical  Reason 226 

III.  The  Absolute ^^7 

1.  Monism ^^^ 

2.  The  Absolute  as  Known  a  priori 229 

3.  The  Absolute  as  Value 230 

4.  Man  the  Microcosm ' 232 

CHAPTER  XVn.    Absolute  Optimism 23s 

I.  Ethical  Ideals 235 

1.  The  Ethics  of  Duty  and  Freedom 235 

2.  The  Ethics  of  SeU-Realization 237 

II.  Value  Fitted  to  Fact 240 

ni.  The  Confusion  of  Values 244 

IV.  The  Tolerance  of  Evil 246 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  IX 

Page 

CHAPTER  XVIII.    The  Absolutist  Conception  of  the  State 251 

I.  The  Nature  of  the  State 254 

1.  Organic  Unity  of  the  Nation 256 

2.  The  State  and  the  Nation 258 

II.  The  Finality  of  the  State 261 

1.  Internal  Finality 261 

2.  External  Finality 263 

3.  National  Self-Realization 263 

4.  The  Responsibility  of  the  State 265 

CHAPTER  XIX.    War  and  Progress  According  to  Absolutism.  .  267 

I.  Intemationality  and  Peace 267 

1.  The  Great  Conmiunity 267 

2.  Professor  Bosanquet's  Hegelianism 271 

3.  The  International  " State  of  Nature" 275 

II.  History  and  Progress 278 

1.  The  Drama  of  History 278 

2.  Etemalism 279 

CHAPTER  XX.    The  Revolt  against  Reason 281 

I.  Varieties  of  Anti-intellectualism 281 

1.  Motives 281 

2.  Degrees 283 

n.  Romanticism 285 

III.  Instrumentalism 287 

1.  Instnmientalism  versus  Kantian  Idealism 287 

2.  Experimentalism 290 

3.  Egoistic  Experimentalism 291 

4.  The  Instrumentalist  Interpretation  of  Nature 293 

IV.  Irrationalism 294 

CHAPTER  XXI.    The  Pragmatic  Justification  of  Faith 298 

I.  The  Voluntary  Character  of  Religious  Faith 298 

II.  The  Biological  Justification 3^^ 

III.  The  Moral  Justification 3^4 

rV.  The  Spiritual  Justification 3^7 

1.  The  Religious  Values 3^7 

2.  Ritschlianism  and  Modernism 3^9 

V.  Faith  and  Truth 3" 


I 

1 


I 

i 


X  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

Page 

CHAPTER  XXII.    Pluralism  and  the  Finite  God 3^6 

I.  The  Preciousness  of  the  Individual 3^7 

II.  Pluralism  and  Freedom 322 

1.  Alternative  Possibilities 322 

2.  Regret 3^4 

3.  Meliorism 320 

m.   The  Finite  God 326 

CHAPTER  XXIII.    The  Gospel  of  Action  and  Movement 331 

I.  Vitalism 332 

II.  Practicality 334 

III.  Action  for  Action's  Sake 335 

1.  Functional  Exercise 335 

2.  The  Sense  of  Living 337 

3.  The  Sense  of  Power 33^ 

4.  The  Sense  of  Effort 338 

IV.  Ultimate  Ideals 34© 

1.  Heroism 340 

2.  The  Universal  Life 343 

3.  Forward  Movement 345 

CHAPTER  XXIV.    The  Practical  Philosophy  of  Bergson 348 

I.  Quietism 35° 

II.   Freedom 35i 

III.  Life  versus  Mechanism 353 

IV.  Man's  Place  in  Nature 359 

1.  Man  as  a  Part  of  Nature 356 

2.  Pluralism  and  the  Triumph  of  Life 357 

3.  The  Human  Individual 359 

V.  The  Conception  of  God 360 

1.  God  and  Time 360 

2.  God  as  the  Source 361 

3.  God  as  the  Current 362 

CHAPTER  XXV.    The  New  Realism 364 

I.  The  Independence  of  the  Fact 364 

1.  The  Attitude  of  Science 365 

2.  Values  as  Facts 368 

II.  Platonic  Realism 371 

ni.   Externality  of  Relations 373 

IV.  The  Immanence  of  Consciousness 376 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  XI 

Page 

CHAPTER  XXVI.    The  Philosophy  of  Nationality 381 

I.  National  Consciousness 381 

1.  The  Nation  and  the  Race 381 

2.  The  Territorial  Aspect 383 

3.  Nationality  and  Institutions 385 

4.  The  Modifiability  of  Nationality 387 

II.   Abuses  of  Nationalism 389 

1.  Confusion  of  Standards 389 

2.  Fanaticism 39® 

3.  Nationalism  and  Humanity 392 

III.  Limits  of  the  Present  Study 395 

CHAPTER  XXVII.    German  National  Traits 398 

I.  Profundity 398 

II.  Egoism 404 

III.  Aptitude  for  Organization 408 

IV.  Emotionality 413 

CHAPTER  XXVIIL    The  German  Profession  of  Faith 417 

I.  Idealistic  Influences 417 

1.  The  Ethics  of  Self-realization 419 

2.  The  Philosophy  of  the  State 421 

II.  Anti-idealistic  Influences 423 

1.  Commercialism 423 

2.  Naturalism 425 

3.  Nietzsche 427 

4.  Political  Opportunism 428 

in.  The  Reconciliation 430 

CHAPTER  XXIX.    French  National  Traits 434 

I.  Humanism 43^ 

1.  The  Sensibilities  of  the  Intellect 436 

2.  Aptitude  for  Expression 43^ 

II.  Chivalry 44© 

HI.  Factionalism 442 

IV.  Social  Cohesiveness 445 

CHAPTER  XXX.    Characteristics  of  French  Thought 45© 

I.  The  Intellectualistic  Tendency 45° 

I.  Cartesianism 45° 

n.  The  Voluntaristic  Tendency 454 


11 


^;.  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

^^  Page 

III.  French  Ethics ^^^ 

1.  The  Scientific  Ethics "^^9 

2.  Voluntaristic  Ethics ^^ 

IV.  The  French  Conception  of  the  State 4  ^ 

1.  Fraternity 

2.  The  Unity  of  the  Nation 402 

3.  The  Nation  and  Humanity 40S 

CHAPTER  XXXI.    English  National  Traits 466 

I.  Sagacity 

II.  Self-reliance ^'^^ 

III.  Reserve ^'^^ 

IV.  Moral  Conservatism 47 

CHAPTER  XXXII.    General  Characteristics  of  British  Thought    479 

I.  Fundamental  Empiricism 479 

•  II.  British  Idealism 482 

1.  Empirical  Idealism 4o3 

2.  The  Reaction  against  Utilitarianism 48S 

3.  The  Reaction  against  Individualism 488 

III.  British  Ethics 49i 

I.  The  Ethics  of  Conscience 492 

I.  Utilitarianism 493 

3.  Self-realization 494 

i.  Political  Applications 494 

CHAPTER  XXXIII.  The  American  Ideal  of  Social  Equality...    497 

I.  The  Motive  of  Compassion 499 

II.  The  Motive  of  Emulation S^i 

III.  The  Motive  of  Self-respect S04 

IV.  The  Motive  of  Fraternity 5^ 

V.  The  Motive  of  Envy 5^7 

VI.  Do  We  Really  Mean  it? Sio 

CHAPTER  XXXIV.    The  Principles  of  Our  Political  Democracy.    513 

I.  The  Motive  of  Negative  Liberty 5^3 

II.  The  Principle  of  Civil  Liberty 516 

III.  The  Premise  ot  Innate  Equality Si9 

IV.  The  Love  01  Power 523 

V.  The  Principle  of  Representation 525 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  Xlll 

Page 

CHAPTER  XXXV.    The  American  Tradition  and  the  American 

Ideal 529 

I.  American  Traits 529 

II.  Philosophical  Tendencies 533 

III.  The  Perfecting  of  Democracy 537 

IV.  Nationality  and  Worid-peace 542 


I 


I 


The  Present  Conflict  of  Ideals 

CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTION 

I.    OBJECT   OF   THE   PRESENT   WORK 

In  undertaking  the  present  work  I  am  fully  conscious  of  its 
inevitable  defects.  In  so  far  as  it  is  reflective  and  moderate 
in  tone  it  will  not  arouse  enthusiasm.  There  is  nothing  less 
picturesque  and  impelling  than  moderation.  A  moderate 
will  always  be  suspected  of  fearing  to  commit  himself  deeply. 
Having  an  eye  to  the  future,  and  a  tolerant  regard  for  differ- 
ences of  opinion,  looks  very  much  like  having  an  anchor  to 
windward.  And  in  times  of  emergency,  when  action  must 
be  rough  and  forceful,  there  is  something  like  impertinence 
in  a  too  fastidious  analysis  of  sentiments  and  ideas.  Not 
long  before  writing  these  lectures  I  was  further  humbled  by 
readinJT  in  a  current  weekly  that  "the  dulness  of  professors  " 
had  now  eclipsed  the  proverbial  dulness  of  clergymen,  that 
"for  concentrated  dulness  the  professors  have  the  equip- 
ment to  be  first."  "Whatever  chance  there  was  for  the 
incendiary  brain  of  mankind  before  professors  organized 
dulness,  there  is  practically  none  at  present."  At  about  the 
same  time  I  read  the  following  equally  humbling  pronounce- 
ment by  Rolland: 

^'A  lecture  is  a  thing  hovering  in  the  balance  between  tiresome 
comedy  and  polite  pedantry.  For  an  artist  who  is  rather  bashful 
and  proud,  a  lecture,  which  is  a  monologue  shouted  in  the  presence 
of  a  few  hundred  unknown,  silent  people,  a  ready-made  garment 
warranted  to  fit  all  sizes,  though  it  actually  fits  no  one,  is  a  thing 
intolerably  false."  ^ 

Now  it  is  impossible,  I  fear,  to  do  anything  about  the  dul- 
ness. As  to  the  other  complaint,  that  no  lecture  really  fits 
the  people  it  is  addressed  to  —  or,  that  if  it  fits  one  it  cannot 

*  Jean-Ckristophe  in  Paris,  p.  369. 


2  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

possibly  fit  another,  I  am  counting  on  the  fact  that  we  are 
just  now  more  of  one  mind  than  is  usually  the  case.  We  are 
all  thinking  most  of  the  time  of  the  stupendous  events  that 
are  making  the  history  of  our  age.  Four  years  ago  we  were 
all  nursing  our  own  Httle  pet  illusions  —  firmly  entrenched 
each  behind  his  own  prejudice.  But  we  have  been  pro- 
foundly shaken,  all  of  us.  Many  of  the  old  landmarks  are 
gone,  many  of  the  old  hopes  blasted,  and  one  thing,  namely 
complacency  —  smug  contentment,  lost  and  gone  forever. 
We  are  all  willing  to  do  some  fresh  thinking,  and  to  rebuild 
our  faith  if  possible  on  better  and  surer  foundations. 

It  is  my  hope  in  these  lectures  to  bring  to  light  the  deeper 
conflict  of  ideas  and  ideals,  of  creeds  and  codes,  —  of  philos- 
ophies of  hfe,  in  short  —  that  underUes  the  conflict  of  sub- 
marines, airplanes  and  howitzers.     This  is  a  modern  war  in 
which  the  belligerents  are  nations  largely  governed  by  general 
ideas  and  ultimate  values.     It  is  these  general  ideas  and  ulti- 
mate values  that  are  at  stake.    The  age  after  the  war  will  be 
a  new  age;  not  so  much  because  the  map  of  Europe  will  be 
changed,  but  rather  because  the  map  of  the  human  mind  will 
be  changed.     It  is  our  present  expectation  and  determina- 
tion that  certain  ideas,  like  national  aggrandizement,  at 
present  supported  by  most  redoubtable  champions,  will  find 
only  a  narrow  and  insecure  lodgment  in  the  human  mind; 
and  that  other  ideas  such  as  international  justice  and  domes- 
tic self-government  shall  be  the  big  and  triumphant  ideas. 
But  it  will  not  be  altogether  a  matter  of  the  rise  of  some  ideas 
and  the  fall  of  others;  to  some  extent  there  will  be  an  exchange 
of  ideas.     Ideas  are  catching;  and  you  can  catch  ideas,  like 
diseases,  as  well  from  your  enemy  as  from  your  friend.     If 
the  idea  be  a  good  one  you  are  not  going  to  refuse  it  merely 
because,  for  example,  it  was  *'made  in  Germany."     No  one 
in  our  country  is  exhorting  us  to  be  wasteful,  weak  and  dis- 
organized, merely  because  the  opposites  of  these  qualities 
are  German.     I  suspect  we  shall  even  learn  to  think  well  of 
efficiency  again,  though  perhaps  under  another  name. 

In  short  this  is  a  time  of  volcanic  upheavals,  of  storm  and 
conflict  in  the  realm  of  the  mind.    All  sorts  of  ideals  are 


i 


I 


$ 


INTRODUCTION  3 

voiced  abroad  and  passionately  followed.  In  the  midst  of 
all  this  I  should  like  to  be  able  to  make  for  myself  and  others 
some  maps  and  guide  posts,  so  that  we  may  know  to  what 
standard  to  rally,  where  to  follow,  where  to  resist,  —  where 
to  adopt,  where  to  reject. 

In  our  innermost  beliefs  and  convictions,  those  deeper 
things  we  live  for,  we  stand  more  or  less  apart;  in  groups, 
perhaps,  here  and  there,  but  with  no  clear  understanding 
of  one  another.  I  should  like  to  help  create  a  mutual 
understanding  between  friends  and  foes  alike.  What  are 
the  deeper  ideal  bonds  that  unite  us?  What  are  the  irrecon- 
cilable differences  of  belief  and  conscience  that  divide  us?  I 
should  like  to  be  able  to  construct  a  world-map  of  convic- 
tions, creeds,  ideas,  like  the  maps  which  the  ethnologists 
make  showing  the  distribution  of  racial  types  in  Europe;  or 
like  the  maps  economists  make  to  show  the  distribution  of 
the  corn  crop.  I  should  like  to  make  a  map  with  intellectual 
and  moral  meridians,  with  degrees  of  latitude,  trade-routes 
of  thought,  and  great  capitals  of  faith. 

This  is  a  comprehensive  undertaking;  you  may  be  tempted 
to  say  that  it  is  an  impossible  undertaking.  But  that  is 
what  you  must  expect  of  a  philosopher.  A  modest,  attain- 
able goal  is  no  business  of  his.  There  is  a  wholesome,  com- 
mon-sense suspicion  of  philosophy  which  exists  everywhere 
and  which  makes  it  desirable  that  the  philosopher  should 
clearly  proclaim  his  purpose.  The  way  to  disarm  common 
sense,  I  have  found,  is  to  acknowledge  the  entire  justice  of  its 
suspicions.  If  I  am  asked  whether  philosophy  is  not  against 
common  sense,  I  reply,  ''Yes,  that's  the  beauty  of  it." 
Philosophy  criticises  and  generalizes,  doubts  and  wonders, 
past  all  the  bounds  of  everyday  living.  But  that  is  pre- 
cisely what  it  is  for. 

Is  philosophy  practical?  It  is  fair  to  ask  that  question  to- 
day, when  we  live  in  one  perpetual  emergency.  But  ob- 
serve that  anything  is  practical  which  contributes  to  your 
purpose.  If  you  are  in  your  office  confronted  by  financial 
failure,  and  a  man  drops  in  to  talk  about  ''the  highest  good," 
you  throw  him  out  as  unpractical.    If  you  are  on  a  raft  dying 


I 


A  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

of  thirst  and  a  man  offers  to  lend  you  $1000,  you  resent  his 
suggestion  as  unpractical;  but  you  might  listen  to  a  priest,  as 
well  as  to  a  man  with  a  glass  of  water.  It  all  depends,  then, 
on  what  interest  is  moving  you  at  the  moment.  Now  our 
purpose  in  this  war  is  a  hberal  purpose,  a  statesmanhke  pur- 
pose a  purpose  that  relates  to  the  whole  future  of  humanity. 
We  want  to  make  the  best  things  of  hfe  safe  for  all  time. 
What  then,  is  practical?  Powder  and  poison  gases?  Yes, 
decidedly.  Theory  of  the  state?  Philosophy  of  value? 
The  truth  about  Hfe  and  the  world?  Again  yes  —  and  no 
less  decidedly.  For  such  Ught  will  help  us  to  see  our  way  — 
and  to  reach  the  destination  we  are  just  now  striving  for. 

The  French  soldiers  have  been  told  that  they  should  speak 
to  the  Germans  with  bullets.     I  am  heartily  in  favor  of  that 
way  of  speaking.    The  thing  of  paramount  importance  at 
this  moment  is  that  there  should  be  as  great  a  volume  of  that 
sort  of  speech  as  possible.    Bullets  should  have  priority  over 
every  kind  of  commodity  exported  to  Central  Europe.     I  do 
not  say  this  because  I  am  a  particularly  bloodthirsty  sort  of 
individual.    I  particularly  dislike  to  talk  of  violence,  or  to 
exhort  others  to  violence  and  hardship.    But  I  should  not  be 
honest  if  I  did  not  say  at  once  that  in  my  judgment  we  are  in 
great  peril,  and  can  save  ourselves  only  by  a  united  and 
supreme  effort.     So  far  as  we  know  the  enemy  is  stronger  in 
mihtary  power,  as  he  certainly  is  in  prestige,  than  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war.    The  spoils  of  war,  such  as  they  are,  are 
mainly  his.     Just  at  the  present  moment  we  seem  to  be  in  a 
sort  of  trance,  deceived  by  that  strange  mirage  of  peace  that 
has  deceived  us  and  disarmed  us  a  dozen  times  or  more  in 
the  last  four  years.^    To-morrow  or  the  next  day  we  shall 
wake  up  and  find  that  Germany  has  made  another  of  those 
dreadful  thrusts  at  the  weakest  point  in  the  lines  that  en- 
circle her.     It  may  be  in  Mesopotamia,  or  at  Salonica,  or  in 
Italy,  or  on  the  Western  front.    We  do  not  know,  and  we 
are  not  meant  to  know.    When  it  comes  we  shall  despair  of 
peace  as  blindly  and  unreasonably  as  we  now  expect  it. 
In  the  place  of  these  childish  and  fitful  emotions,  what  we 

*  Written  on  January  18,  1918. 


INTRODUCTION  5 

need  is  a  grim,  determined,  unceasing,  unrelenting  effort,  — 
a  pull  all  together,  and  a  long  pull  that  shall  grow  stronger  and 
stronger  until  the  day  when  the  enemy  shall  break  under  the 
strain.  Just  now  we  are  spending  too  much  time  looking  at 
the  horizon  for  harbingers  of  peace;  at  those  little  toy  peace 
balloons  which  the  enemy  knows  so  well  how  to  fool  us  with. 
We  can  win  this  war;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  we  shall  win 
it.  We  can  if  we  exert  ourselves  to  the  utmost;  otherwise 
not.  Now  is  the  time  for  that  great  effort,  for  that  girding 
of  the  loins,  for  that  deep,  steady  breathing  of  an  athlete 
entering  a  great  test  of  endurance. 

We  who  are  behind  the  lines,  more  safe  than  we  any  of  us 
deserve,  unable  to  enjoy  our  safety  because  we  feel  the  ig- 
nominy of  it;  —  we,  I  say,  can  only  comfort  ourselves  by  the 
belief  that  we  are  making  ready  line  after  line  of  reserves, 
reserves  of  men  and  women,  reserves  of  supplies,  reserves 
of  brain  and  heart  and  conscience,  that  shall  make  this 
nation's  strength  inexhaustible  and  irresistible.  And  I  like 
to  think  that  by  such  studies  as  this  we  shall  be  preparing 
moral  reserves.  We  went  to  war  on  a  moral  issue.  I  be- 
lieve that  that  is  the  case  also  with  our  allies,  but  with 
us,  there  can,  I  think,  be  no  question.  We  went  to  war  de- 
liberately; in  a  sense,  and  I  thank  God  for  it,  we  went  out  of 
our  way  to  go  to  war.  We  were  guided  by  a  deliberate  judg- 
ment of  right  and  wrong.  We  went  to  war  for  the  safety  and 
victory  not  only  of  our  miserable  bodies,  but  for  the  safety 
and  victory  of  the  things  we  account  best  —  integrity,  gentle- 
ness, peace  and  liberty.  Now  I  believe  that  in  order  to  sus- 
tain the  great  burden  of  this  war  we  shall  need  to  keep  these 
broader  purposes  in  view.  You  will  notice  that  on  the  Allied 
side  the  war  has  become  more  and  more  clearly  and  un- 
qualifiedly a  war  of  principle.  Our  own  entrance  into  the 
war  has  had  something  to  do  with  this.  But  it  is  also  due  to 
the  fact  that  as  France  and  England  have  fought  on  under 
the  long  and  almost  unbearable  strain  they  have  more  and 
more  felt  the  need  of  strong  conviction  and  a  good  heart. 
The  knight  who  confessed  his  sins  before  he  went  into  battle 
may  have  professed  to  do  it  from  the  fear  of  being  overtaken 


6  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

by  a  sudden  death;  but  I  believe  there  was  a  deeper  motive 

—  the  need  of  going  into  battle  with  an  undivided  self.  No 
man  can  put  forth  his  full  power  for  a  long  time  if  his  con- 
science is  against  him.  He  needs  to  keep  warm  m  his  heart 
the  highest  loyalties  that  move  him.  We  have  gone  to  war 
on  high  grounds,  and  we  shall  be  able  to  remain  at  war  and 
to  reach  our  maximum  of  power  only  provided  we  continue 
to  take  high  ground.     We  must  see  this  war  as  The  Great  War 

—  not  in  the  numbers  of  nations  and  men  engaged,  not  in  its 
volume  of  death  and  destruction,  but  in  the  greatness  of  the 
issues  which  are  at  stake.  And  so  I  hope  that  in  this  course 
of  lectures  we  may  be  helped  a  Httle  to  see  these  issues;  to 
renew  our  devotion  to  the  purpose  that  moves  us,  and  our  re- 
solve that  in  such  a  purpose  there  shall  be  no  turning  back. 

II.    ORDER   OF   TOPICS 

In  the  chapters  that  follow  I  shall  briefly  survey  such  pro- 
fessions of  faith  as  are  both  important  and  characteristic  of 
the  present  age.     In  a  book  which  I  published  in  191 2,  called 
Present  Philosophical  Tendencies,  I  endeavored  to  discuss 
and  compare  in  a  relatively  technical  and  polemical  manner 
what  I  thought  to  be  the  chief  doctrinal  alternatives  with 
which  the  philosophers  of  the  day  have  provided  the  thinking 
public.     I  dealt  chiefly  in  each  case  with  the  argument;  with 
the  reasoning  or  evidence  by  which  each  protagonist  built  up 
his  case.     Now  it  so  happens  that  the  crucial  questions  in 
technical  philosophy  belong  to  what  the  philosopher  calls 
*'epistemology  "  or  theory  of  knowledge.     Epistemology  is 
the  bitter  substance  of  every  sugar-coated  philosophical  pill. 
The  volume  I  have  just  spoken  of  contains  rather  strong 
epistemological  doses,  such  as  philosophers  can  cope  with 
and  even  relish,  but  which  are  usually  found  unpalatable  and 
indigestible  by  the  layman.     In  the  present  lectures  I  am 
going  at  the  matter  from  the  other  end.     Instead  of  tracing 
contemporary  philosophy  to  its  ultimate  roots,  I  am  looking 
for  its  flowers  and  fruits.     What  are  the  philosophies  of  life, 
the  codes,  creeds  and  ideals  by  which  men  live,  and  to  which 
they  appeal,  in  their  reflective  moments,  for  justification  of 


INTRODUCTION 


7 


'I 

I 


i 


their  acts  and  policies?  We  shall  be  moving,  in  other  words, 
not  in  the  higher  latitudes  of  metaphysics,  theory  of  knowl- 
edge and  logic;  but  in  the  temperate  and  semi-tropical  regions 
of  moral,  political  and  religious  philosophy,  where  it  is  less 
difiicult  to  sustain  life. 

But  I  propose,  nevertheless,  to  retain  the  main  divisions 
of  contemporary  thought  as  they  were  drawn  in  Present 
Philosophical  Tendencies.  In  that  book  I  distinguished  four 
tendencies:  Naturalism,  Idealism,  Pragmatism  and  Realism, 
I  have  become  less  and  less  confident  of  the  coordinate  rank 
of  these  four  tendencies.  When  one  abandons  polemics  and 
attempts  quite  disinterestedly  to  analyze  the  temper  of  the 
times,  when  one  leaves  the  philosophical  closet  and  debating 
room,  and  lives  in  the  intellectual  out-of-doors  —  above  all, 
when  one  turns  to  the  influences  of  philosophy  on  human 
purposes  and  policies,  then  these  four  tendencies  appear  of 
very  unequal  weight.  It  becomes  evident  that  the  mightiest 
tendency  of  our  day  is  naturaHsm.  Reahsm,  on  the  other 
hand,  must  evidently  bide  its  time  and  content  itself  for  the 
present  with  laying  claim  to  the  future! 

By  naturalism  I  mean  such  philosophy  as  grows  directly 
out  of  the  methods  or  results  of  the  physical  sciences.  I  find 
at  least  four  great  ideas  that  move  men  in  these  days  and 
that  have  sprung  from  this  source.  First,  there  is  the  ma- 
terialistic metaphysics,  that  corporeal  and  mechanical  view 
of  reality  which  I  have  proposed  to  call  The  Alien  World. 
Second,  there  is  the  scientific  method,  adopted  as  a  creed  and 
code;  science  valued  not  so  much  for  its  conclusions,  as  for  its 
procedure.  ThislshdllcdllTheCult  of  Science.  Then  there 
is  the  application  of  science  to  the  life  of  man,  and  the  emer- 
gence into  view  of  a  new  entity,  the  great  social  complex,  —  a 
new  unit  in  discourse,  a  new  object  of  emotion  and  allegiance. 
This  is  The  Discovery  of  Society.  Finally,  the  advancement 
of  biological  science  has  brought  to  the  front  the  conception 
of  Evolution,  and  many  have  found  in  this  conception  the  in- 
strument of  moral  and  even  religious  reconstruction. 

Over  against  all  of  these  tendencies  which  signify  the 
prestige  of  the  natural  or  physical  sciences,  there  stands 


8 


^THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


idealism,  as  the  champion  of  moral  and  rehgious  faith.  This, 
broadly  speaking,  is  the  philosophy  which  proclaims  the 
ascendancy  or  priority  of  the  world  of  consciousness  over  the 
world  of  bodies.  There  are  many  varieties  of  it.  I  have 
found  it  convenient  to  consider  first,  as  a  group,  all  those 
views  which  spring  from  the  established  moral  and  rehgious 
beliefs.  I  shall  then  discuss  those  more  moderate  idealistic 
views,  such  as  Personal  Idealism,  which  proclaim  the  irre- 
ducibility  of  the  individual  soul,  the  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  the  personahty  of  God  as  Christian  Theism 
conceives  it.  We  are  thus  enabled  to  throw  into  reUef  and 
discuss  by  itself  the  more  radical  and  distinctive  form  of 
ideahsm,  which  we  shall  call  The  Philosophy  of  the  Absolute, 
and  which  we  shall  discuss  in  its  various  moral,  poUtical 
and  religious  phases. 

Then,  turning  to  pragmatism,  we  shall  consider  first  its 
relatively  negative  aspect,  its  assault  upon  the  intellect,  or 
The  Revolt  against  Reason;  and  second  its  positive  aspect,  or 
its  emphasis  upon  Hfe  as  the  essential  reality  and  as  the 
supreme  good.  Finally,  under  the  title  of  realism,  I  shall 
make  a  small  place  for  certain  recent  philosophizings  with 
which  I  find  myself  in  accord,  and  from  which  I  expect  much 
in  time  to  come. 

This  constitutes  the  program  so  far  as  general  philosophical 
tendencies  are  concerned.  It  will  be  observed  that  in  this 
program  there  is  no  specific  mention  of  Christianity,  or 
various  other  staple  ideas.  The  reason  is  this.  I  am  not 
attempting  to  expound  all  that  people  believe  in  this  second 
decade  of  the  Twentieth  Century,  but  rather  the  disturbing 
factors,  the  variants  in  thought.  That  which  is  traditional 
and  established,  common  to  modern  European  Christendom, 
I  take  as  sea-level,  from  which  to  measure  the  heights  and 
depths;  or  as  the  normal  temperature  by  which  to  judge  the 
chills  and  fevers  of  reaction  and  innovation. 

Having  sketched  these  broader  features  of  our  philosophi- 
cal map,  and  having  thus  oriented  them  by  general  philo- 
sophical axes  of  reference,  I  shall  attempt  a  more  difficult, 
but  perhaps  more  timely,  undertaking.     The  present  war  has 


INTRODUCTION  9 

brought  nationality  to  a  pitch  of  intensity  and  self-conscious- 
ness hitherto  unknown  in  human  history.  In  the  heat  and 
desperation  of  bitter  conflict  the  grim  and  lifelike  features 
of  national  physiognomy  have  been  uncovered.  The  paint 
has  run  and  the  masks  have  been  torn  off.  In  the  moment 
of  supreme  effort  the  souls  of  nations  are  written  in  their 
faces.  I  shall  attempt,  though  with  a  clear  consciousness  of 
the  well-nigh  insuperable  difficulty  of  the  task,  to  depict 
some  of  these  national  physiognomies,  those  which  are  most 
definitely  formed,  and  with  which  we  are  best  acquainted. 
I  shall  discuss  the  soul,  the  ideals,  of  Germany,  of  France, 
and  of  England. 

And  then,  finally,  I  shall  invite  you  to  take  counsel  with 
me  as  to  our  own  national  purposes.  With  us,  as  indeed 
with  all  the  nations  of  the  earth,  it  is  not  merely  a  question 
of  what  we  have  been,  and  of  what  we  have  sought  to  achieve 
in  history;  it  is  also  a  question  of  what,  quite  independently 
of  tradition,  we  are  now,  and  in  the  light  of  present  events,  do 
now  seek  to  achieve  in  history.  In  the  very  act  of  searching 
our  souls  we  shall  be  participating  in  that  national  renovation 
and  reconstruction  which  must  inevitably  accompany  and 
follow  this  great  national  effort. 


CHAPTER  II 
OUR  ACTIONS  AND  OUR  PROFESSIONS 

The  present  war,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  war  of  fundamental 
ideas.  Each  belligerent  nation  has  professed  a  creed  and 
gone  forth  to  do  battle  for  it.  In  these  lectures  we  have 
undertaken  to  examine  these  fundamental  ideas  and  creeds 
and  to  relate  them  to  the  broader  currents  of  modem  philo- 
sophical thought.  But  at  the  very  outset  we  are  chal- 
lenged by  the  claim  that  in  spite  of  all  professions  to  the 
contrary  neither  men  nor  nations  do  as  a  matter  of  fact 
either  go  to  war  or  do  anything  else  as  a  result  of  holding 
certain  fundamental  ideas.  The  real  causes  of  action,  we 
are  told,  are  entirely  illogical,  non-intellectual,  perhaps  even 
unconscious.    A  recent  French  writer  has  said : 

*'The  great  lesson  of  the  event  which  is  shaking  the  world  — 
namely,  that  the  world  is  not  governed  by  reason,  that  irrational 
forces  (sentiment,  pride,  collective  dreams,  fanaticism,  will  to 
power  and  to  conquest)  are  always  latent  in  nations,  producmg  by 
their  explosions  the  great  upheavals  of  History,  just  as  the  sub- 
terranean forces  of  the  globe  shattered  in  the  past  —  and  may 
again  to-morrow  shatter  —  the  land  on  which  quiet  harvests  are 
now  growing;  that  truth  reigns  no  more  than  reason,  since  sixty- 
five  million  Germans  sincerely  believe  that  which  is  not,  and  since, 
if  they  conquer,  their  delusion  and  the  lie  of  their  masters  will 
prevail:  this  lesson  has  failed  to  impress  itself  on  these  theorists 
and  dreamers,  who  did  not  feel,  like  their  brothers  in  France,  the 
earth  trembling  and  ready  to  open  under  their  feet."  ^ 

There  is  more  hope  of  a  man  who  believes  that  the  evils 
in  the  world  are  the  result  of  irrational  fate,  than  of  the  man 
who  thinks  them  all  to  be  the  decrees  of  absolute  reason; 
for  the  former  can  at  least  disapprove  them.     But  it  is 

^  Chevrillon:  England  and  the  War,  pp.  180-181. 

10 


ACTIONS  AND   PROFESSIONS 


II 


evident  that  if  fundamental  ideas  had  nothing  to  do  with 
human  policies,  our  present  undertaking  would  be  a  waste 
of  effort.  To  discuss  this  issue  with  any  philosophical  or 
psychological  thoroughness  would  take  us  far  afield.  But 
we  must  meet  the  challenge,  and  meet  it  before  we  can 
proceed  further. 

I.    THE  PROFESSION  OF  REASONS 

In  answering  this  contention  which  would  relegate  all 
philosophies  of  life  to  a  shadow  world,  where  they  would  play 
no  real  causal  part  in  the  drama  of  history,  I  wish  first  to 
call  attention  to  the  fact  that  human  beings  do,  apparently, 
feel  the  need  of  offering  good  reasons  for  their  action.  It  is 
a  notorious  fact,  which  all  cynics  and  satirists  have  been 
fond  of  exploiting,  that  we  are  inclined  to  profess  only  the 
highest  and  noblest  motives  for  our  actions.  Parents  never 
punish  their  children  from  temper,  but  always  for  the 
child's  welfare  in  this  world  or  the  next.  Nations  never  go 
to  war  for  glory  or  aggrandizement,  but  in  self-defense,  or 
for  the  advancement  of  civilization.  Even  the  Devil  we 
are  informed  can  and  does  cite  Scripture  for  his  purpose. 
**For  the  use  of  reason,"  says  Conrad  in  a  recent  novel, 
*^is  to  justify  the  obscure  desires  that  move  our  conduct, 
impulses,  passions,  prejudices,  and  follies,  and  also  our 
fears." ^  In  other  words,  though  our  conduct  is  really  moved 
by  "impulses,"  "passions,"  "prejudices,"  "follies"  and 
"fears,"  we  feel  obliged  to  conceal  these  true  motives,  and 
invoke  reason  to  invent  other  and  fictitious  motives. 

In  his  Human  Nature  in  Politics,  Mr.  Graham  Wallas 
has  shown  us  that  although  the  voter's  action  is  largely 
due  to  simple  instincts,  he  will  always  seek  to  justify  his 
vote : 

"The  tactics  of  an  election  consist  largely  of  contrivances  by 
which  this  immediate  emotion  of  personal  affection  may  be  set  up. 
The  candidate  is  advised  to  'show  himself  continually,  to  give 
away  prizes,  to  'say  a  few  words'  at  the  end  of  other  people's 

^  Victory,  p.  93. 


i 


12 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


ACTIONS  AND   PROFESSIONS 


13 


speeches  .  .  His  portrait  is  periodically  distributed.  .  .  .  Best  of 
aJl  is  a  photograph  which  brings  his  ordinary  existence  sharply 
forward  by  representing  him  in  his  garden  smoking  a  pipe  or  read- 
ing a  newspaper.  A  simple-minded  supporter  whose  affection  has 
been  so  worked  up  wiU  probably  try  to  give  an  intellectual  explana- 
tion of  it.  He  will  say  that  a  man,  of  whom  he  may  know  reaUy 
nothing  except  that  he  was  photographed  in  a  Panama  hat  with 
a  fox-terrier,  is  'the  kind  of  man  we  want/  and  that  therefore  he 
has  decided  to  support  him;  just  as  a  child  will  say  that  he  loves 
his  mother  because  she  is  the  best  mother  in  the  world,  or  a  man 
in  love  will  give  an  elaborate  explanation  of  his  perfectly  normal 
feeling,  which  he  describes  as  an  intellectual  inference  from  alleged 
abnormal  excellences  in  his  beloved."^ 

One  more  example.  There  has  been  organized  in  France 
a  patriotic  society  called  'T  Union  Sacree^  It  is  an  at- 
tempt, apparently  a  successful  attempt,  to  bring  the  dif- 
ferent intellectual  factions  of  France  together,  under  the 
influence  of  the  common  passion  and  the  common  purpose 
of  patriotism.  M.  Ferdinand  Buisson,  one  of  the  founders 
of  the  movement,  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  although 
the  French  nation  is  united  in  sentiment  and  action,  never- 
theless each  faction.  Catholic,  Protestant  and  Free-thinker, 
has  its  own  peculiar  reasons  —  and  no  one  ascribes  his  action 
simply  to  the  influence  of  passion. 

''Have  you  not  remarked,'*  he  asks,  "in  the  innumerable  letters 
of  soldiers  to  their  families,  letters  of  which  the  press  has  given 
extracts  by  the  hundred,  have  you  not  remarked  how  these  men  so 
similar  in  action  remain  so  different  in  opinion  and  conviction? 
Not  only  do  they  not  hide  the  fact,  or  try  to  find  a  formula  which 
will  attenuate  these  dissimilarities  and  discords,  but  on  the  con- 
trary, with  a  simplicity  which  commands  respect,  the  catholic 
utters  his  catholic  faith  in  appropriate  terms,  the  free-thinker  with 
a  like  directness  utters  his  free  thought,  and  so  with  all  of  them: 
each  guards  his  faith,  each  affirms  it  boldly,  not  in  an  aggressive 
tone,  but  nevertheless  dotting  all  the  i's.  This  seems  entirely 
natural  to  them,  it  neither  constrains  nor  surprises  anyone.    They 

»  Pp.  30  ff. 


M 


N 


are  not  at  all  astonished  at  having  many  explanations  of  one  mode 
of  action."  ^ 

This  suggests  that  since  the  action  is  the  same  and  the 
reasons  different  —  the  reasons  therefore  cannot  make  any 
difference.  But  that  would  be  a  hasty  conclusion.  It 
would  be  as  though  one  were  to  argue  that  because  ten 
men  voted  the  Republican  ticket  for  ten  different  reasons, 
therefore  the  reasons  had  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Indeed 
the  inference  is  rather  to  the  contrary.  If  you  grant 
that  the  ten  men  are  different  to  start  with,  then  if  they 
all  professed  the  same  reasons  for  performing  the  same 
act,  one  would  rightly  suspect  their  professions;  because 
one  would  know  that  if  they  were  all  submitted  to  the  same 
influence  their  original  differences  would  remain  unreduced. 
If  you  have  ten  sticks  of  wood  of  different  sizes,  and  you  cut 
an  inch  from  each  of  them,  they  remain  of  different  sizes. 
In  order  to  make  them  the.  same  size  you  must  cut  off  a 
different  length  from  each.  Similarly,  if  a  Catholic,  a  Protes- 
tant and  a  Free-thinker  are  to  be  brought  to  emotional 
and  practical  uniformity,  each  must  be  influenced  and  modi- 
fied in  a  way  suited  to  his  own  peculiar  differences. 

The  outstanding  fact  thus  far,  then,  is  the  fact  that  we 
do  give  reasons,  deeper  moral,  philosophical  or  religious 
reasons,  for  our  action.  We  feel  the  need  of  so  doing.  We 
are  not  brought  to  the  point  of  action,  at  any  rate  of  pro- 
longed, persistent  action,  without  such  self- justification. 
Now  I  submit  that  if  this  is  the  case,  it  is  simply  contrary 
to  fact  to  say  that  our  reasons  make  no  difference  to  our 
action  —  that  they  are  shadowy  and  impotent.  There  is 
no  possible  explanation  of  this  universal  human  practice  of 
self-justification,  unless  we  grant  that  it  is  a  necessary 
condition  of  action;  and  once  you  grant  that  it  is  a  neces- 
sary condition  of  action  you  have  virtually  conceded  that 
in  any  given  practical  situation  it  may  be  the  decisive 
condition  of  action. 

*  "  Le  vrai  sens  de  1  'Union  Sacree,"  p.  1 1 ,  reprinted  from  Reme  de  Metaphysique 
et  de  Morale,  July,  1916. 


14 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 
II.    PROFESSION   AS   A  MASK   FOR   IMPULSE 


But  the  common  explanation  of  professions  is  that  they 
are  useful  only  for  purposes  of  dissimulation.  They  deceive 
others  as  to  our  intentions  -  clothe  the  ravening  wolf  in 
sheep's  clothing  and  so  enable  him  to  trap  his  prey.  Mis- 
anthropists of  all  times  have  taught,  for  example,  that  every 
man  is  secretly  governed  by  evil  and  sinister  motives.  His 
professions  of  duty  and  humanity  are  useful  lies,  by  which 
he  secures  the  confidence  of  others  while  he  robs  them. 
Or  take  the  traditional  conception  of  the  demagogue.  He 
pretends  to  be  acting  for  the  people's  good,  is  full  of  high- 
sounding  patriotic  phrases;  but  uses  these  merely  to  secure 
a  support  which  he  means  to  misuse  for  his  selfish  advantage. 

A  similar  view  appears  in  the  version  of  modern  states- 
manship and  foreign  policy,  which  is  offered  by  such  a 
writer,  for  example,  as  Thorstein  Veblen.  The  national 
profession  of  faith,  according  to  his  view,  is  a  means  by 
which  cunning  and  unscrupulous  politicians  fool  their  own 
people  into  patriotic  support,  and  fool  enemy  nations  into 
unsuspecting  weakness.  For  this  purpose  every  Govern- 
ment needs  its  trained  philosophers  as  a  sort  of  social  organ 
of  dissimulation. 

'^The  ideals,  needs  and  aims  that  so  are  brought  into  the  patriotic 
argument  to  lend  a  color  of  rationality  to  the  patriotic  aspiration 
in  any  given  case  will  of  course  be  such  ideals,  needs  and  aims  as 
are  currently  accepted  and  felt  to  be  authentic  and  self-legitimating 
among  the  people  in  whose  eyes  the  given  patriotic  enterprise  is 
to  find  favor.  .  .  .  The  Prussian  statesman  bent  on  dynastic 
enterprise  will  conjure  in  the  name  of  the  dynasty  and  of  culture 
and  efficiency;  or,  if  worst  comes  to  worst,  an  outbreak  will  be 
decently  covered  with  a  plea  of  mortal  peril  and  self-defense. 
Among  English-speaking  peoples  much  is  gained  by  showing  that 
the  path  of  patriotic  glory  is  at  the  same  time  the  way  of  equal- 
handed  justice  under  the  rule  of  free  institutions;  at  the  same  time, 
in  a  fully  commercialized  community,  such  as  the  English-speaking 
commonly  are,  material  benefits  in  the  way  of  trade  will  go  far  to 
sketch  in  a  background  of  decency  for  any  enterprise  that  looks  to 
the  enhancement  of  national  prestige.  ...    By  and  large  ...  it 


ACTIONS  AND   PROFESSIONS 


IS 


will  hold  true  that  no  contemplated  enterprise  or  line  of  policy  will 
fully  commend  itself  to  the  popular  sense  of  merit  and  expediency 
until  it  is  given  a  moral  turn,  so  as  to  bring  it  to  square  with  the 
dictates  of  right  and  honest  dealing.  On  no  terms  short  of  this 
will  it  effectually  coalesce  with  the  patriotic  aspiration."  ^ 

On  this  theory,  then,  all  philosophizing  men  and  nations, 
all  who  give  broad,  fundamental,  humane  reasons  for  their 
action  are  hypocrites.  Thus,  for  example,  when  President 
Wilson  answered  the  Pope's  peace  note  and  stated  the 
American  profession,  the  German  newspapers  were  not  un- 
justified in  dubbing  him  arch-hypocrite;  in  alluding  to  his 
"swollen  phrases,"  ''absolute  mendacity,"  ''crocodile  tears," 
"Pharisaical  hypocrisy,"  "unctuous  proclamation"  and 
"brazen  cheek." 

Now  my  own  belief  has  always  been  that  the  charge  of 
hypocrisy  is  a  cheap  and  superficial  way  of  dodging  the 
issue.  It  does  sometimes  happen  that  a  man  who  is  going 
to  rob  you  approaches  you  in  the  name  of  friendship;  that 
a  man  definitely  desiring  and  intending  one  thing,  deliber- 
ately makes  it  appear  that  he  desires  and  intends  another. 
But  to  suppose  this  to  be  universal  would,  of  course,  be 
ridiculous.  Human  intercourse  is  based  upon  the  fact  that 
normally  human  professions  can  be  taken  at  their  face  value. 
It  is  perfectly  evident  that  if  we  were  all  wolves  in  sheep's 
clothing,  if  everyone  wearing  sheep's  clothing  were  a  wolf  at 
heart,  then  sheep  would  long  since  have  acquired  the  un- 
pleasant reputation  now  enjoyed  by  wolves,  and  there  would 
be  no  demand  for  their  clothing.  There  is  no  understanding 
of  hypocrisy,  no  explanation  of  the  selfish  advantage  which 
may  accrue  from  it,  except  on  the  hypothesis  that  like 
mendacity  it  is  exceptional.  It  is  useful  only  in  so  far  as  it 
finds  men  off  their  guard,  owing  to  the  habits  of  credulity 
and  trust  which  have  been  built  up  by  the  common  practice 
of  honesty  and  candor. 

*  An  Inquiry  into  the  Nature  of  Peace,  pp.  35,  36. 


i6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 
HI.    WHY  WE  JUSTIFY  OUR  ACTIONS 


We  must,  I  think,  look  elsewhere  for  the  explanation  of 
this  need  of  having  reasons  or  professions  to  justify  our 
action  My  thesis  is  this:  That  we  justify  our  actions  in 
order  to  gain  a  wider  support  for  them  either  mthtn  our  in- 
dividual, personal  lives,  or  within  the  social  group. 

I  For  Personal  Support.  Let  us  consider  the  matter 
first  in  its  personal  aspect.  Each  of  us  is  a  bundle  of  inter- 
ests a  httle  colony  of  different  impulses,  wishes  and  aspira- 
tions They  are  bound  together  so  that  no  one  of  them  can 
act  itself  out  without  affecting  the  others.  Given  any  one 
of  these  interests,  all  the  rest  of  the  personal  household  of 
interests  act  as  a  check  upon  it.  The  more  unified  a  person 
is  the  more  character  or  consistency  of  purpose  he  has,  the 
less  is  any  of  his  interests  left  to  itself.  Each  interest  has 
got  somehow  to  satisfy  the  rest. 

Now  in  so  far  as  an  act  is  dictated  only  by  immediate 
impulse,  it  has  no  support  beyond  itself.     It  may  get  itself 
performed;   the  immediate  impulse  which  incites  it  may  be 
powerful  enough  for  a  time  to  ignore  and  override  every 
conflicting  interest.     But  its  state  is  none  the  less  precarious 
and  weak,  owing  to  its  isolation.     Suppose,  for  example, 
that  I  act  from  the  appetite  for  food  and  from  that  alone. 
My  greed  may  for  a  time  be  unrestrained.     But  in  so  far 
as  I  act  solely  from  greed,  and  conceive  my  act  in  no  other 
Hght,  sooner  or  later  my  other  interests,  in  vocational  suc- 
cess, or  long  Hfe  or  friends,  are  going  to  assert  themselves 
against  my  greed  and  put  in  conflicting  claims  for  my  lim- 
ited time,  resources  and  vitality.     I  may  be  merely  troubled, 
haunted  by  these  conflicting  interests,  so  that  I  am  uneasy 
in  mind  and  hesitant  in  action.     I  cannot  eat  greedily  with 
conviction,  with  my  whole  heart.     But  suppose  I  conceive 
my  eating  as  a  means  of  nourishing  my  body,  and  so  as  an 
indirect  condition  of  the  other  interests  which  depend  on 
my  physical  vitality.    The  food  does  not  cease  to  gratify 
my  taste,  but  my  indulgence  has  gained  new  allies.     New 
springs  of  action   are   called  in   to  its  support.     Getting 


ACTIONS  AND   PROFESSIONS 


17 


reasons  for  an  action,  in  other  words,  means  securing  addi- 
tional incentives  to  its  performance  —  getting  the  sanction, 
and  perhaps  the  active,  dynamic  support  of  my  whole  per- 
sonal complex.  There  will  still  be  one  motive  that  stands 
nearest  to  the  act,  and  which  contributes  the  major  part 
of  the  energy  which  it  expends  in  overcoming  obstacles. 
But  there  will  now  be  auxiliary  motives,  which  give  it 
potentially  the  backing  of  all  my  reserves. 

If  we  have  commonly  failed  to  accept  this  rather  obvious 
view  of  the  matter,  it  is  because,  I  think,  we  are  deceived 
by  the  idea  that  every  act  must  have  one  and  only  one 
motive.  Nothing  could  be  further  from  the  truth.  In 
human  action  of  the  reflective  sort  actions  are  almost  never 
free  from  ulterior  motives.  And  mixed  motives  do  not  in 
the  least  imply  duplicity.  They  imply  simply  that  a  single 
motive,  the  initial  motive,  is  not  sufficient  to  bear  the  burden. 
In  so  far  as  we  feel  the  need  of  seeing  the  act  *^in  another 
light,"  or  of  putting  it  ^^on  other  grounds,"  we  are  conscious 
of  the  weakness  of  the  first  appeal,  and  the  need  of  securing 
the  accession  of  interests  that  have  not  yet  been  called  into 
play. 

The  justification  of  action,  in  short,  is  the  means  of  securing 
the  adoption  of  the  act  by  the  self  as  a  whole;  so  that  it  may 
enjoy  the  support  of  the  whole  sum  of  dispositions  that  con- 
stitutes an  active  personality. 

2.  For  Social  Support.  Now  let  us  consider  the  matter 
in  its  social  and  political  bearings.  No  nation  can  go  to 
war  owing  to  the  drive  of  a  simple  instinctive  motive. 
This  has  grown  to  be  less  and  less  possible  in  proportion  as 
individuals  have  become  enlightened,  and  have  been  taught 
to  act  on  their  own  judgment.  Men  can  no  longer  be  hired 
to  fight,  nor  can  they  be  driven  into  war  by  harsh  masters. 
Gusts  of  passion  soon  blow  by.  Fear,  hate,  love  of  adven- 
ture, greed,  touch  no  man  to  the  depths  of  his  soul;  and  as 
the  war  wears  on  there  are  more  and  more  men  whom  they 
do  not  touch  at  all.  A  nation  that  is  to  fight  grimly  on, 
with  all  its  might  and  with  all  its  resources,  must  be  con- 
vinced.   This  means  that  all  the  interests  of  all  the  millions 


p» 


l8  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

all  a  stake  in  the  outcome. 

What  then,  does  the  statesman,  the  leader,  ao.  ri 
concTes  the  war  in  its  broader  aspects  and  bearings.  He 
b^rto  Hght  and  pubUshes  to  his  people  the  trams  of 
cluse  aid  elect,  the  seque-es  of  logic,  by  which  it  connects 
Sth  e^ery  human  motive.  And  he  must  beware  of  pre- 
Sting  it  ^n  such  a  light  as  to  alienate  or  dmde  aUegiance. 
irSpeals  to  the  greed  of  some,  he  wiU  antagomze  the 
humaSrof^o^  So  he  will  find  himseU  by  a  sort  o 

plS'divination  coming  more  and  more  to  ideah^^^^^^^^^^ 
national  cause;  presenting  it  more  and  more  -  the  hght  o 
those  consequences  that  are  umversally  good.  And  he  wiU 
find  it  necelary  from  time  to  tune  to  restate  his  nation  s 
cause  to  take  account  of  new  feeUngs,  new  scruples,  which 
would  otherwise  divide  the  national  strength. 

It  will  usuaUy  happen  that  an  indmduals  action  will 
have  two  or  more  ^'philosophies,"  or  forms  of  justification. 
It  may  be  justified  by  a  personal  philosophy  by  which  he 
charts  his  own  private  course  of  affairs.     Beyond  this  i 
may  be  justified  by  a  party  or  sectarian  creed  that  unites 
hhn  only  with  fellow-Catholics,  fellow-Protestants  or  fellow- 
Free-thinkers,   with   fellow-RepubUcans,    fellow-Democrats 
or  fellow-SociaHsts.     But  this  in  no  wise  imphes  that  the 
same  act  shall  not  have  over  and  above  its  personal,  party 
or  reUgious  reasons,  certain  national  or  humane  reasons 
that  just  now  unite  him  with  his  fellow-patnots. 

When  you  examine  the  history  of  this  war  you  will  find 
that  all  the  leading  nations  went  to  war  for  a  pohcy  which 
secured  the  soUd  support  of  their  people,  and  could  be  served 
with  conviction  and  a  whole  heart.  But  as  time  wore  on 
motives  of  righteous  indignation,  just  retaUation,  pumtive 
severity,  blind  fear,  have  proved  less  and  less  effective. 
They  have  proved  to  alienate  as  well  as  win  support.  It 
has  been  necessary  to  conceive  the  war  in  broader  and 
broader  terms.  Even  we  have  changed,  and  changed  radi- 
cally, in  the  few  months  since  we  entered  the  war.     We 


ACTIONS   AND   PROFESSIONS 


19 


went  to  war  from  indignation  at  the  murder  of  our  women 
and  children  on  the  high  seas,  and  to  enforce  the  letter  of 
international  law.  But  we  soon  found  it  necessary  to  draw 
upon  our  moral  reserves.  We  changed  our  cause,  and  pro- 
fessed to  be  at  war  to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy, 
for  such  institutions  as  our  own.  Already  there  is,  I  think, 
another  change.  We  conceive  the  war  now  as  a  war  to 
establish  a  permanent  condition  of  peace  and  well-being  in 
all  nations.  Even  the  Russian  revolutionists  have  forced 
all  the  belligerents  to  change  their  stand,  and  to  profess  in- 
terest in  the  deliverance  of  the  masses  of  humble  men  from 
economic  subjection. 

It  is  absurd  to  say  that  these  professions  are  not  sincere. 
Or  rather,  it  is  flippant  and  superficial  to  say  so.  The  in- 
dividuals who  are  the  mouthpieces  of  these  statements  may, 
and  doubtless  in  some  cases  do,  entertain  private  opinions 
to  the  contrary.  But  the  significant  thing  is  that  they 
should  feel  compelled  to  say  them;  significant  because  it 
betrays  the  fact  that  the  several  nations  for  w^hom  they 
speak  will  not  continue  to  fight,  will  not  stand  solidly 
against  the  enemy,  unless  their  cause  is  represented  to  them 
as  wholly  beneficent  and  humane. 

The  greatest  advantage  which  the  Allies  enjoy  over  the 
Central  Powers  is  a  philosophical,  a  moral  advantage.  The 
German  nation  as  a  whole  has  fought  for  two  causes:  for 
the  unlimited  expression  of  its  national  personality;  and 
for  the  defense  of  its  territorial  integrity.  The  latter  cause 
is  destroyed  at  the  moment  when  the  German  people  can 
be  convinced  that  the  policy  of  the  Allies  is  not  one  of  ter- 
ritorial aggrandizement  or  expropriation.  The  former  cause 
is  a  vicious  cause,  because  it  is  narrow,  intolerant,  and  in 
effect  aggressive  and  dangerous.  In  the  long  run  it  will  go 
stale  and  cease  to  carry  conviction.  The  Allies  have  from 
the  beginning  stood  on  broader  and  more  solid  grounds. 
They  have  a  philosophy,  a  creed  which  need  excite  no  man's 
fears,  and  which  has  the  power  of  rallying  all  enlightened 
men  to  its  support.  Sooner  or  later  it  cannot  fail  to  prevail, 
because  it  is  to  every  man's  interest  that  it  should. 


20 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


We  turn  now  to  the  stock  of  fundamental  ideas  by  which 
in  our  own  age  men  and  nations  are  wont  to  justify  them- 
selves;  ^om  which  they  draw  those  professions  which  en- 
able  them  to  live  steadily  and  umtedly. 


CHAPTER  HI 


THE  ALIEN  WORLD 


In  characterizing  one^s  own  age,  it  is  important  not  to  con- 
fuse its  mere  contemporaneousness  with  its  genuine  historical 
pecuUarities.  There  are  certain  characteristics  which  any 
age  whatsoever  will  present  to  the  eyes  of  those  who  live  in 
it.  It  will  always  be  the  *^ modern"  age,  the  latest  phase  of 
human  development.  And  it  will  always  be  an  age  of  **  tran- 
sition.'' There  will  be  on  the  one  hand  those  ideas  and  in- 
stitutions that  are  over-ripe,  or  decaying,  or  dried  up,  and 
on  the  other  hand  those  which  are  in  the  bud,  full  of  sap  and 
the  promise  of  luxuriance  to  come.  The  old  men  will  judge 
the  age  in  terms  of  the  past,  as  a  decline  from  the  *^good  old 
days'' ;  and  the  young  men  will  judge  it  in  terms  of  the  future 
as  the  dawn  of  a  better  to-morrow.  To  both  young  and  old 
it  will  appear  to  be  an  age  of  transition,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  every  age  is  an  age  of  transition,  and  for  the  further  and 
equally  simple  reason  that  change  always  receives  more 
notice  and  comment  than  sameness. 

Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  my  own  warning,  I  do  think  that 
there  are  reasons  for  regarding  such  comment  as  peculiarly 
applicable  to  the  era  just  prior  to  the  war.  Strindberg,  for 
example,  suggests  that  it  is  this  transitional  quality  of  the 
present  age  which  makes  it  peculiarly  modern. 


''Because  they  are  modem  characters,  living  in  a  period  of 
transition  more  hysterically  hurried  than  its  immediate  predecessor 
at  least,  I  have  made  my  figures  vacillating,  out  of  joint,  torn 
between  the  old  and  the  new.  .  .  .  My  souls  (or  characters)  are 
conglomerates,  made  up  of  past  and  present  stages  of  civilization, 
scraps  of  humanity,  tom-off  pieces  of  Sunday  clothing  turned  into 
rags  —  all  patched  together  as  is  the  human  soul  itself.  And  I 
have  furthermore  offered  a  touch  of  evolutionary  history  by 
letting  the  weaker  repeat  words  stolen  from  the  stronger,  and  by 


21 


22 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


letting  different  souls  accept  'ideas^  -or  suggestions,  as  they  are 
called  —  from  each  other."  ^ 

One  may  justly  remark  that  every  age  is  an  age  of  transi- 
tion; and  that  the  crucial  character  of  one's  own  age  is  an 
illusion,  reflecting  the  contrast  between  the  immediate  ex- 
perience of  novelty  and  change,  and  the  static  panorama  of 
historical  retrospect.  But  if  one  may  claim  to  have  escaped 
a  common  illusion,  there  does  appear  to  be  some  substance 
to  Strindberg's  contention.  And  I  think  that  the  deepest 
cause  for  it  is  the  vogue  of  science,  of  what  might  be  called 
''  the  new  enlightenment."  Science  is  essentially  innovating 
and  radical,  suspicious  of  what  is  estabHshed  and  traditional. 
And  science  has  since  the  Nineteenth  Century  acquired  a 
prestige  and  a  place  in  the  educational  and  cultural  system 
which  is  unparalleled  in  the  past.  Its  influence  has  been 
further  extended  by  the  increase  of  means  of  communication 
and  popularization  until  something  of  the  spirit  of  the  sci- 
entist has  crept  into  the  soul  of  every  child  of  European 
civilization. 

A  contemporary  critic  has  written  of  Huysmans, 

"He  was  the  critic  of  modernity,  as  Degas  is  its  painter,  Gon- 
court  its  exponent  in  fiction,  Paul  Bourget  its  psychologist."  ^ 

This  writer  was  referring  to  the  close  of  the  Nineteenth 
Century,  rather  than  the  dawn  of  the  Twentieth;  he  was 
confined  in  his  outlook  to  art  and  literature,  and  in  his  in- 
stances to  Parisian  France.  Nevertheless  this  characteri- 
zation of  modernity,  of  the  modernity  of  the  eve  of  the  war, 
is  typical,  and  would  be  generally  accepted.  Now  those  of 
you  who  know  one  or  more  of  these  Frenchmen,  Huysmans, 
Degas,  Goncourt  or  Bourget,  will  agree,  I  think,  that  their 
common  trait  is  their  disillusionment  —  their  preoccupation 
with  the  world  as  it  is,  rather  than  as  they  might  desire  it  to 
be,  rather  than  as  it  ought  to  be.     This  again,  I  think,  is  the 

1  Author's  Preface  to  "Miss  Julia,"  Plays,  trans,  by  Edwin  Bjorkman,  Vol. 
II,  p.  loi.  Cf.  Nietzsche's  statement  that  "Our  age  gives  the  impression  of 
an  intermediate  condition, "  in  his  Human  all  too  Human,  §  248. 

*  Huneker:  Egoists,  p.  188. 


THE  ALIEN  WORLD 


23 


effect,  direct  or  indirect,  of  that  medium  of  science  in  which 
like  all  sons  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  they  have  lived  and 
breathed. 

There  are  many  ways  in  which  science  has  influenced  the 
modern  mind;  but  I  think  they  may  be  divided  broadly  into 
three.  There  is,  first,  the  general  synoptic  view  of  the  world 
which  the  physical  sciences  in  the  aggregate  afford.  There 
is,  second,  the  method,  the  example,  the  institution  of  science 
itself.  And,  third,  there  are  certain  special  discoveries  or 
conceptions  of  science  of  peculiar  scope  and  importance.  In 
the  present  lecture  we  are  to  study  the  first  of  these  modes 
of  influence.  I  propose  to  present  to  you  the  materialistic 
picture  of  the  world:  what  Huxley  has  called  the  ** night- 
mare "  conception  of  the  world,  what  I  have  proposed  to 
call  ''The  Alien  World  ''  in  order  to  stress  its  foreignness  to 
the  most  cherished  hopes  and  aspirations  of  man. 


I.    THE   COSMIC   PICTURE   ACCORDING   TO   MATERIALISM 

Philosophical  materialism  was  not  invented  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century;  nor  is  it  peculiarly  characteristic  of  that 
century.  Its  metaphysics  and  its  moral  and  religious  impli- 
cations were  formulated  as  long  ago  as  the  Greek  atomists 
of  the  Fifth  Century  before  Christ.  But  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  the  materialistic  picture  was  filled  in,  rounded  out 
and  apparently  completed.  The  case  for  materialism  re- 
ceived the  support  of  new  and  seemingly  decisive  evidence; 
and  as  though  the  testimony  were  finally  concluded,  the  case 
was  eloquently  summed  up,  driven  home,  and  impressed  with 
a  new  vividness  upon  the  imaginations  of  men. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  century  the  case  was  outlined,  and 
the  broad  foundations  laid  down  by  La  Place  (1749-1827), 
who  proposed  to  dispense  with  the  services  of  a  Creator,  and 
to  employ  instead  his  ''Nebular  Hypothesis,"  by  which  the 
present  stellar  world  evolves  mechanically  out  of  the  prime- 
val chaos.  The  great  generahzations  of  the  "conservation 
of  matter"  and  the  "conservation  of  energy"  made  it 
possible,  at  least  in  principle,  to  regard  as  parts  of  one  great 


24  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

homogeneous  physical  system  the  motions  of  the  stellar 
masses  the  reactions  of  chemical  substances,  and  the  varied 
phenomena  of  light,  heat,  electricity  and  magnetism.  Spec- 
tral analysis  brought  evidence  to  show  that  the  distant  stars 
have  a  like  composition  and  so  presumably  a  like  origin  with 
the  earth.  The  uniformitarian  geology  of  Lyell  and  Hutton 
provided  the  beginnings  of  a  history  of  this  planet  in  terms 
of  well-known  physical  laws,  and  in  terms  that  would  fit  it 
as  a  chapter  into  the  universal  cosmic  history. 

But  the  great  victories  of  materialism  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  were  those  gained  over  Hfe  and  man,  mind  and 
reUgion.  Evidently  the  crucial  test  of  materiaHsm  must 
always  lie  in  its  abiUty  to  apply  its  corporeal  and  mechanical 
conceptions  to  those  phenomena  which  are  prima  facie  non- 
mechanical  or  incorporeal.  Hence  the  significance  of  me- 
chanical and  chemical  physiology,  in  which  the  living  or- 
ganism is  shown  to  have  the  properties  of  a  complex  machine. 
Hence  the  significance  of  physiological  psychology  in  which 
consciousness  is  reduced  to  the  status  of  an  attendant  upon 
mechanically  determined  brain-states.  Hence  the  supreme 
significance  of  the  Darwinian  principle  of  natural  selection, 
which  seemed  to  provide  a  mechanical  explanation  of  the 
origin  of  all  the  higher  forms  of  Hfe  and  to  assimilate  man 
wholly  to  his  natural  environment.  Darwin  was  quite 
conscious  of  the  bearings  of  his  views. 

"The  old  argument  from  design  in  Nature,  as  given  by  Paley, 
which  formerly  seemed  to  me  so  conclusive,  fails,  now  that  the  law 
of  natural  selection  has  been  discovered.  We  can  no  longer  argue 
that,  for  instance,  the  beautiful  hinge  of  a  bivalve  shell  must  have 
been  made  by  an  intelligent  being,  like  the  hinge  of  a  door  by  man. 
There  seems  to  be  no  more  design  in  the  variability  of  organic 
beings,  and  in  the  action  of  natural  selection,  than  in  the  course 
which  the  wind  blows."  ^ 

These  discoveries  tended  to  discredit  the  traditional  teach- 
ings of  religion;  and  sharply  contradicted  the  letter  of  the 
Scriptures.  At  the  same  time  the  scientific  method  of  his- 
tory was  apphed  by  Bishop  Colenso,  Strauss  and  others  to 

^  Darwin:  Life  and  Letters,  Vol,  I,  pp.  278-279. 


THE  ALIEN  WORLD 


2S 


the  study  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  and  seemed  to 
throw  man  back  from  revelation  upon  the  doubtful  mercy 
of  the  unaided  human  intellect. 

The  most  graphic  description  of  the  lot  of  man  as  mater- 
ialism conceives  him  is  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour's  description, 
well  known  to  many  American  readers  through  William 
James's  citation  of  it  in  his  Pragmatism. 

"Man,  so  far  as  natural  science  by  itself  is  able  to  teach  us,  is 
no  longer  the  final  cause  of  the  universe,  the  Heaven-descended 
heir  of  all  the  ages.  His  very  existence  is  an  accident,  his  story  a 
brief  and  transitory  episode  in  the  life  of  one  of  the  meanest  of  the 
planets.  Of  the  combination  of  causes  which  first  converted  a 
dead  organic  compound  into  the  living  progenitors  of  humanity, 
science,  indeed,  as  yet  knows  nothing.  It  is  enough  that  from  such 
beginnings  famine,  disease  and  mutual  slaughter,  fit  nurses  of  the 
future  lords  of  creation,  have  gradually  evolved,  after  infinite 
travail,  a  race  with  conscience  enough  to  feel  that  it  is  vile,  and 
intelligence  enough  to  know  that  it  is  insignificant.  We  survey 
the  past,  and  see  that  its  history  is  of  blood  and  tears,  of  helpless 
blundering,  of  wild  revolt,  of  stupid  acquiescence,  of  empty  aspira- 
tions. We  sound  the  future,  and  learn  that  after  a  period,  long 
compared  with  the  individual  life,  but  short  indeed  compared  with 
the  divisions  of  time  open  to  our  investigation,  the  energies  of  our 
system  will  decay,  the  glory  of  the  sun  will  be  dimmed,  and  the 
earth,  tideless  and  inert,  will  no  longer  tolerate  the  race  which  has 
for  a  moment  disturbed  its  solitude.  Man  will  go  down  into  the 
pit,  and  all  his  thoughts  will  perish.  The  uneasy  consciousness, 
which  in  this  obscure  corner  has  for  a  brief  space  broken  the  con- 
tented silence  of  the  universe,  will  be  at  rest.  Matter  will  know 
itself  no  longer.  ^Imperishable  monuments'  and  ^immortal 
deeds,'  death  itself,  and  love  stronger  than  death,  will  be  as  though 
they  had  never  been.  Nor  will  anything  that  is  be  better  or  be 
worse  for  all  that  the  labour,  genius,  devotion,  and  suffering  of 
man  have  striven  through  countless  ages  to  effect."^ 

A  similar  and  not  less  impressive  description  of  this  cosmic 
spectacle  is  offered  by  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell: 

"That  Man  is  the  product  of  causes  which  had  no  prevision  of 
the  end  they  were  achieving;  that  his  origin,  his  growth,  his  hopes 

^  Foundations  of  Belief,  pp.  29-31. 


26 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


and  fears,  his  loves  and  his  beHefs,  are  but  the  outcome  of  acci- 
dental coUocations  of  atoms;  that  no  fire,  no  heroism,  no  intensity 
of  thought  and  feeling,  can  preserve  an  individual  life  beyond  the 
grave;  that  aU  the  labor  of  the  ages,  all  the  devotion,  all  the 
inspiration,  all  the  noonday  brightness  of  human  genius,  are 
destined  to  extinction  in  the  vast  death  of  the  solar  system,  and 
that  the  whole  temple  of  Man's  achievement  must  inevitably  be 
buried  beneath  the  debris  of  a  universe  in  ruins  —  all  these  things, 
if  not  quite  beyond  dispute,  are  yet  so  nearly  certain,  that  no 
philosophy  which  rejects  them  can  hope  to  stand.  Only  within 
the  scaffolding  of  these  truths,  only  on  the  firm  foundation  of 
unyielding  despair,  can  the  soul's  habitation  henceforth  be  safely 
built.''  1 

What  sorts  of  habitation  man  has  attempted  to  build  for 
his  soul  within  this  scaffolding,  we  have  now  to  inquire. 
The  remarkable  thing  is  that  man  has  so  many  ways  of 
adjusting  himself,  emotionally  and  practically,  even  to  a 
world  so  conceived.  To  feel  the  full  force  of  the  disillusion- 
ment, of  this  absolute  reversal  of  human  hopes,  one  should 
compare  this  picture  with  the  faith  of  the  Thirteenth  Cen- 
tury, in  which  man  believed  himself  the  peculiar  object  of 
interest  to  a  Creator  conscious  and  moral  like  himself;  and 
in  which  he  believed  his  habitation,  this  earth,  to  be  the 
stage  set  in  the  center  of  the  cosmos  and  especially  fitted  and 
equipped  for  the  enactment  of  that  drama  in  which  he  is  the 
central  figure.^ 


II.    MAN  AS  A  PART  OF  NATURE 

The  first  step  in  the  readjustment  which  this  spectacle  of 
the  alien  world  requires,  is  to  put  man  in  his  place.  The  old 
religion  thought  of  him  as  "a  little  lower  than  the  angels  "; 
the  new  materialism  thinks  of  him  as  a  little  higher  than  the 
anthropoid  ape.  You  cannot  immediately  convert  man's 
thoughts  and  ideals  into  collocations  of  atoms.  But  ma- 
terialism has  a  way  of  accomplishing  the  reduction  by  a  series 
of  steps.     You  can  offer  a  psychological  description  of  his 

1  "The  Free  Man's  Worship,"  Philosophical  Essays,  pp.  60-61. 

2  Cf.  Anatole  France,  Le  Jardin  d' Epicure,  pp.  i-io. 


THE  ALIEN  WORLD 


27 


thoughts  and  ideals;  a  physiological  explanation  of  the 
psychical;  a  chemical  explanation  of  the  physiological;  and  a 
physical  explanation  of  the  chemical;  until  finally  man  and 
all  his  works  find  a  place  in  the  one  great  cosmic  complex  of 
matter  and  energy. 

On  every  side  we  meet  with  interests  and  sentiments  that 
originate  in  this  physical  version  of  man.  The  very  ex- 
travagance of  the  claims  once  made  in  man's  behalf  have  led 
to  a  somewhat  brutal  insistence  upon  his  new  pedigree  and 
status,  as  a  creature  of  nature.  There  is  the  characteristic 
emphasis  on  physical  well-being,  health,  nutrition,  sanitation, 
eugenics,  in  modern  social  service.  There  is  the  represen- 
tation of  the  pitiable  plight  of  man,  struggling  helplessly  in 
the  web  of  heredity  and  other  modes  of  physical  causation. 
There  are  the  great  physical  schools  of  history  that  explain 
man  and  his  deeds  in  ethnic,  geographical  or  physical  terms. 
Even  the  men  of  letters,  such  as  Ibsen,  Strindberg  and 
Brieux,  have  taught  us  to  view  man  in  this  light.  It  is  well 
summed  up  in  the  saying,  "Man  is  a  piece  of  the  Earth" 
{Die  Menschheit  ist  ein  Stuck  der  Erde). 


III.    UTILITY   OF   SUPERSTITION 

Faith  in  a  spiritual  empire  above  this  terrestrial  king- 
dom, or  faith  in  lasting  achievement  through  the  human 
will  and  reason  —  these  are  apparently  discredited  by  that 
view  of  the  world  which  physical  science  presents.  Religion 
and  moral  idealism,  then,  are  no  better  than  superstition. 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  superstition  should  be 
abolished.  Speaking  of  the  religion  of  Rome,  Hobbes  had 
said: 

"And  by  these  and  such  other  institutions,  they  obtained  in 
order  to  their  end,  which  was  the  peace  of  the  commonwealth,  that 
the  common  people  in  their  misfortunes,  laying  the  fault  on  neglect, 
or  error  in  their  ceremonies,  or  on  their  own  disobedience  to  the 
laws,  were  the  less  apt  to  mutiny  against  their  governors;  and 
being  entertained  with  the  pomp  and  pastime  of  festivals,  and 
public  games,  made  in  honour  of  the  gods,  needed  nothing  else  but 


28 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


bread  to  keep  them  from  discontent,  murmuring,  and  commotion 
against  the  state.  .  .  .  And  thus  you  see  how  the  religion  of  the 
Gentiles  was  part  of  their  policy."  ^ 

On  such  political  grounds  or  on  other  grounds  of  ex- 
pediency, it  is  even  now  sometimes  judged  expedient  that 
superstition  should  be  preserved,  as  a  sop  to  the  vulgar  or  a 
syrup  for  babes.  The  full  truth  would  be  too  strong  and 
bitter  a  dose  for  the  average  man.  Let  him  hug  his  illusions. 
Let  him  lean  on  error  who  is  too  weak  to  stand  in  the  truth. 
At  any  rate  if  he  must  lose  his  religion,  let  him  taper  off,  like 
a  man  addicted  to  stimulants.  This  view  appears  in  much 
cynical,  worldly-minded  comment  on  religion:  in  the  view 
that  religion  is  for  women;  or  for  children,  like  the  belief  in 
Santa  Claus;  or  for  the  ignorant  and  unreasoning  masses;  or 
for  any  man  on  his  sick-bed. 

Closely  akin  to  this  is  the  view  that  the  usefulness  of  re- 
ligion justifies  its  being  regarded  as  true.  But  this  is  in 
reality  a  different  view  because  it  puts  religion  on  a  par  with 
science,  or  even  on  a  higher  level.^  We  are  here  assuming 
the  superior  and  prior  truth  of  the  physical  sciences.  The 
alien  world  is  supposed  to  be  a  solid  fact,  for  anyone  who  has 
the  courage  to  face  it.  He  who  turns  his  back  on  it,  or  has 
never  had  his  eyes  opened  to  it,  and  cherishes  beliefs  that  are 
more  to  his  li^ng,  forfeits  truth.  His  preferred  beliefs  may 
be  better  for  him,  but  they  are  false  none  the  less.  He 
who  accepting  these  premises  still  justifies  superstition,  is 
virtually  asserting  that  life  is  tolerable  and  safe  for  the 
masses  of  mankind  only  upon  a  basis  of  mendacity  and 
illusion.^ 


IV.    SECULAR  MORALISM 

But  the  picture  of  the  alien  world,  with  its  reduction  of 
man's  place  in  the  world,  and  with  its  denial  of  those  hopes 

1  Leviathan,  Ch.  XII.    Cf.  also  Ch.  XXXIII,  XXXVIII. 

2  Cf.  below,  pp.  311-315- 

2  Cf.  Anatole  France,  below,  p.  35. 


THE  ALIEN  WORLD 


29 


which  religion  has  encouraged,  does  not  necessarily  drive 
man  to  mendacious  superstition,  nor  does  it  necessarily  fill 
his  mind  with  despair,  or  force  him  to  seek  for  consolation. 
To  the  healthy-minded  man  of  affairs  any  of  these  courses 
may  seem  to  be  a  sign  of  weakness.  TertuUian,  it  will  be 
remembered,  said  that  the  very  virtue  of  true  belief  lay  in  its 
being  without  the  support  of  reason.  Anybody  can  believe 
what  his  reason  finds  acceptable;  but  it  proves  a  sort  of 
spiritual  heroism  to  believe  what  is  unreasonable.  The  de- 
mand for  proof  is  a  sort  of  natural  weakness.  Credo  quia 
ahsurdum.  There  is  a  sort  of  inversion  of  this  in  secular 
moralism.  Anybody  can  act  nobly  if  he  allows  himself  to 
believe  hopefully,  and  so  supplies  his  will  with  the  necessary 
incentives.  But  it  takes  courage  to  pursue  an  unfaltering 
course  of  right  action,  when  there  is  no  prospect  of  any  per- 
manent achievement.  The  man  of  faith  renounces  reason. 
Similarly  the  man  of  action  renounces  faith.  ''I  act,''  he 
virtually  says,  ^'because  it  is  not  worth  while."  He  may  be 
a  fool  for  his  pains;  but  there  is  more  merit,  he  feels,  in  doing 
your  duty  with  your  eyes  open,  even  though  you  know  the 
worst,  than  in  permitting  yourself  to  be  blinded  by  com- 
fortable illusions. 

There  is  something  characteristically  British  in  this.  The 
thing  is  to  play  your  part,  do  your  bit,  be  a  man,  without 
worrying  over-much  about  eventualities.  There  is  a  re- 
sponsibility to  be  assumed  and  a  work  to  be  done  in  the 
world  as  you  find  it.  The  decent  and  honorable  thing  is  to 
side  with  good  against  evil,  and  to  take  part  in  the  building 
of  a  better  civilization  just  as  earnestly  as  if  you  were  con- 
vinced that  the  results  of  your  effort  would  be  permanent 
and  universal. 

Huxley's  reaction  to  the  alien  world  is  this  healthy- 
minded  disillusionment.  Perhaps  it  is  not  unfair  to  say  that 
it  is  the  reaction  of  a  man  who  is  not  too  sensitive  and  im- 
aginative to  find  a  manly  and  wholesome  worldUness  quite 
sufficient.  He  is  not  driven  to  despair  or  to  bitterness,  nor 
does  he  feel  the  need  of  those  compensations  to  which  more 
delicately  organized  souls  resort. 


30 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


"We  have  long  since/'  he  says,  "emerged  from  the  heroic  child- 
hood of  our  race,  when  good  and  evil  could  be  met  with  the  same 
*  frolic  welcome';  the  attempts  to  escape  from  evil,  whether  Indian 
or  Greek,  have  ended  in  flight  from  the  battlefield;  it  remains  to 
us  to  throw  aside  the  youthful  over-confidence  and  the  no  less 
youthful  discouragement  of  nonage.    We  are  grown  men,  and 

must  play  the  man 

'  strong  in  will 
'  To  strive,  to  seek,  to  find,  and  not  to  yield,' 

cherishing  the  good  that  falls  in  our  way,  and  bearing  the  evil,  in 
and  around  us,  with  stout  hearts  set  on  diminishing  it." 

"That  which  Ues  before  the  human  race  is  a  constant  struggle 
to  maintain  and  improve,  in  opposition  to  the  State  of  Nature, 
the  State  of  Art  of  an  organized  polity;  in  which,  and  by  which, 
man  may  develop  a  worthy  civilization,  capable  of  maintaming 
and  constantly  improving  itself,  until  the  evolution  of  our  globe 
shall  have  entered  so  far  upon  its  downward  course  that  the  cosmic 
process  resumes  its  sway;  and  once  more  the  State  of  Nature  pre- 
vails over  the  surface  of  our  planet."  ^ 

1  Evolution  and  Ethics  and  Other  Essays ,  pp.  86,  44-45- 


CHAPTER  IV 
DESPAIR  AND  CONSOLATION 

Although  the  spectacle  of  the  alien  world  leaves  some 
modern  minds  quite  unperturbed,  that  cannot  be  said  to  be 
the  common  reaction  among  minds  of  the  more  thoughtful 
and  imaginative  type.  The  man  who  is  busily  preoccupied 
with  the  daily  routine  may  be  cheerfully  oblivious  of  re- 
moter cosmic  events.  But  the  man  who  like  Huxley  is  both 
vividly  aware  of  that  alien  world  which  the  physical  sciences 
represent,  and  at  the  same  time  devoted  without  bitterness 
or  recompense  to  the  cause  of  righteousness,  is  compara- 
tively rare.  The  more  usual  course  is  either  to  desist  from 
a  moral  enterprise  which  one  now  feels  to  be  ridiculous;  or 
to  seek  for  consolation  through  the  play  of  one's  powers  of 
thought  and  imagination. 


I.    PESSIMISM  AND  MISANTHROPY 

The  issue  of  optimism  and  pessimism  is  forthe  most  part 
a  matter  of  temperament  and  subjective  bias.  Emotional 
reactions,  as  we  know,  go  in  pairs,  —  hope  and  fear,  love  and 
hate,  admiration  and  contempt.  Some  men  live  more  in 
the  positive,  some  in  the  negative  form  of  reaction.  You 
will  meet  men,  for  example,  whose  hatreds,  disapprovals, 
resentments  and  grievances  make  up  the  bulk  of  what  they 
live  for.  No  man  can  love,  without  having  at  least  the 
potentiality  of  hatred,  without  at  least  a  nascent  hostility 
to  that  which  defeats  his  love.  But  with  some  men  the 
love  is  the  dominant  passion,  and  the  hate  only  incidental; 
while  with  other  men  the  order  is  reversed.  The  world  pro- 
vides abundant  opportunity  for  the  manifestation  of  either 
t3^e  of  reaction.  Given  any  interest  whatsoever,  sordid  or 
disinterested,  material,  moral,  intellectual  or  aesthetic,  the 
world  will  provide  both  that  which  gratifies  it  and  that 

31 


,2  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

wUch  gives  it  Offense.    One  may  turn  in  one  direction  and 
Ind  the  gratification,  or  in  the  other  and  take  the  offense^ 

Optimism  and  pessimism  are  --^^^^  ,»""^*5f*f  ^'^^ 
men's  characteristic  reactions  to  the  weather  One  man 
TxckLs:  "Oh!  What  a  glorious  day!';  and  the  oU.er 
replies  "Ah!  But  it's  raining  somewhere."  And  of  course 
t  raining  somewhere,  if  you  want  to  think  about  it 
m:t£;  yi  belong  to  the  "Oh's  "  or  the  "Ah's"  lies  with 
you.  The  universe  is  equally  tolerant  of  both  It  was 
Stevenson's  "unconquerable  soul"  that  said,  "the  wodd 
is  so  full  of  a  number  of  things,  I  am  sure  we  should  all  be 
as  happy  as  kings."  For  another  man  could  with  equal 
Sstice  have  said, ''I  am  sure  we  should  all  be  as  wretched 
Is  paupers."  The  worid  contains  a  number  of  things  to  be 
either  happy  or  wretched  about,  as  you  please. 

But  philosophical  pessimism   contains  another  motive. 
The  philosopher  passes  judgment  on  the  universe,  as  on 
the  whole  or  in  principle  of  this  sort  or_  that.    When  there- 
fore, the  philosopher  is  unhappy,  he  is  likely  to  conclude 
that  the  universe  is  on  the  whole  or  in  principle  such  as  to 
make  him  unhappy.    Thus,  Schopenhauer  said  that  being 
is  wiUing,  and  willing  is  unappeased  craving,  and  unap- 
peased  craving  is  suffering;  and,  therefore  being  is  suffering^ 
There  is  another,  and  a  more  universal  human  motive  in 
philosophical  pessimism.    Misery  hkes  not  only  company, 
but  justification.    If  one  is  unhappy,  there  is  a  certain 
satisfaction  in  being  able  to  say,  "No  man  has  any  right  to 
be  happy  in  such  a  worid.    Happiness  is  childish  and  shal- 
low, only  misery  is  profound."    No  manis  wilhng   as  we 
have  seen,  to  refer  to  his  moods  and  passions  as  u  timates, 
he  must  argue  them  from  premises,  and  if  he  is  a  philosopher, 
then  from  the  very  nature  of  the  universe.     So  it  happens 
that  the  long-suffering  universe  has  to  be  perpetually  sitting 
for  its  portrait,  and  with  the  most  astonishmgly  different 
results.     Sometimes  it  looks  like  a  bride  on  her  wedding 
day;  sometimes  more  like  a  great  cosmic  symbol  for  tooth- 
ache, indigestion  or  neurasthenia. 
That  generaUzation  of  nature  which  the  modern  world 


r 


i 


DESPAIR  AND   CONSOLATION  33 

has  received  from  the  collaboration  of  the  physical  sciences 
is,  as  we  have  already  seen,  not  without  its  appeal  to  the 
gloomier  passions.  Nature  is  cruelly,  relentlessly  indifferent 
to  the  interests  of  men.  This  is  one  of  the  modern  ideas  of 
nature,  an  idea  which  is  prominent  in  the  thought  even  of 
one  who  like  Emerson  beheves  in  the  eventual  victory  of 
spirit. 

'' Nature  is  no  sentimentalist,  —  does  not  cosset  or  pamper  us 
We  must  see  that  the  world  is  rough  and  surly,  and  will  not  mind 
drownmg  of  a  man  or  a  woman,  but  swaUows  your  ship  Hke  a 
gram  of  dust.  ...  The  diseases,  the  elements,  fortune,  gravity 
hghtmng,  respect  no  persons.  .  .  .  Nature  is  the  tyrannous  circum- 
stance, the  thick  skull,  the  sheathed  snake,  the  ponderous,  rock- 
like jaw."  ^ 

But  this  is  not  as  yet  philosophical  pessimism.  It  is 
necessary  that  this  cruelty  should  be  thought  of  as  mali- 
cious; that  nature's  motives  should  be  impugned.  Nature 
must  be  resented,  hated,  convicted,  found  out,  exposed, 
known  for  what  she  is.  The  justification  for  such  attitudes 
and  emotions  is  commonly  found  in  the  ironical  contrast 
between  the  great  juggernaut  of  nature,  and  the  wistfulness, 
useless  courage  and  pathetic  hopefulness  of  man.  This  is 
what  Conrad  calls  '^the  Great  Joke.''  He  uses  this  phrase 
apropos  of  a  character  in  Victory  named  Morrison,  of  whom 
the  author  says: 

"He  was  really  a  decent  fellow,  he  was  quite  unfitted  for  this 
world,  he  was  a  failure,  a  good  man  cornered  —  a  sight  for  the 
gods;  for  no  decent  mortal  cares  to  look  at  that  sort."  2 

This  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  the  world  plays  with  its 
human  victim,  tortures  him,  stirs  hopes  and  aspirations  in 
him,  leads  him  on  to  prolonged  and  futile  struggles,  and  then 
unconscionably  stamps  him  out.  The  classic  representa- 
tion of  the  theme  is  the  account  of  creation  which  Goethe's 
Mephistopheles  gives  to  Dr.  Faustus  in  his  study.    A  more 

^  Conduct  oj  Life,  pp.  12,  20. 
2  P.  223. 


34  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

recent  expression  of  the  same  motive  is  to  be  found  in  Thomas 
Hardy's  Dynasts.  But  the  most  eloquent  exponent  of  un- 
ited pessimism,  of  bitterness,  wrath  and  gnef  evoked  by 
the  spectacle  of  man's  lot  is  James  Thomson.  There  are 
two  stages  in  this  pessimist's  progress.  There  is  first  the 
lentment  felt  toward  a  God  that  should  torture  and  mock 
Ws  creatures.  It  were  better  that  there  should  be  no  God 
than  such  a  God;  and  so  the  preacher  in  the  poem  brings 
the  good  tidings  of  atheism: 

"And  now  at  last  authentic  word  I  bring, 
Witnessed  by  every  dead  and  living  thing; 
Good  tidings  of  great  joy  for  you,  for  all:    ^ 
There  is  no  God;  no  Fiend  with  names  divine 
Made  us  and  tortures  us;  if  we  must  pme, 
It  is  to  satiate  no  Being's  gall. 

It  was  the  dark  delusion  of  a  dream, 
That  living  Person  conscious  and  supreme. 
Whom  we  must  curse  for  cursing  us  with  life; 

We  bow  down  to  the  universal  laws, 
Which  never  had  for  man  a  special  clause 
Of  cruelty  or  kindness,  love  or  hate." 

But  thrown  back  upon  the  natural  life,  upon  the  oppor- 
tunities of  this  world,  one  finds  no  comfort  even  there: 

"The  chance  was  never  offered  me  before; 
For  me  the  infinite  Past  is  blank  and  dumb: 
This  chance  recurreth  never,  nevermore; 
Blank,  blank  for  me  the  infinite  To-come. 

And  this  sole  chance  was  frustrate  from  my  birth, 

A  mockery,  a  delusion:  and  my  breath 

Of  noble  human  Ufe  upon  this  earth 

So  racks  me  that  I  sigh  for  senseless  death."  ^ 

1  "The  City  of  Dreadful  Night,"  Poetical  Works,  DobelPs  edition,  Vol.  I, 
pp.  164, 155,  156, 15S-160. 


DESPAIR  AND   CONSOLATION 


35 


Anatole  France  has  been  spoken  of  as  one  ''who  despises 
men  with  tenderness.''  He  is  vividly  conscious  of  man's 
place  in  nature,  as  science  conceives  it.  He  regards  man  in 
the  light  of  that  day  when  the  globe  will  have  become 
uninhabitable.  After  a  long  period  of  decline  during  which 
human  life  will  have  steadily  retrograded  as  the  environ- 
ment grows  more  and  more  unfavorable,  after  having  been 
shorn  of  all  his  glory,  man  will  eventually  expire  and  be 
forgotten. 

"Some  day  the  last  of  them  will  without  hate  and  without  love 
breathe  the  last  sigh  into  the  hostile  heaven.  And  the  earth  will 
continue  to  revolve,  bearing  through  the  silent  spaces  the  ashes  of 
humanity,  the  poems  of  Homer  and  the  august  debris  of  the  Greek 
marbles,  attached  to  its  frozen  flanks."  ^ 

It  is  the  meaninglessness  of  life  that  most  afifects  him. 

"It  resembles  ...  a  vast  atelier  of  pottery  where  some  one  is 
fashioning  all  sorts  of  vases  for  unknown  purposes  and  where 
many,  broken  in  the  mould,  are  rejected  as  vile  potsherds  without 
ever  having  been  used.  The  others  are  employed  only  for  absurd 
or  disgusting  uses.    The  pots  are  ourselves." 

"The  mystery  of  destiny  completely  envelops  us  in  its  powerful 
shades,  and  it  is  necessary  to  avoid  thinking  altogether  if  one  is 
not  to  resent  the  tragic  absurdity  of  living.  It  is  there,  in  the 
absolute  ignorance  of  our  raison  d'etre  that  the  root  of  our  sadness 
and  of  our  disgust  is  to  be  found."  2 

It  is  better  in  such  a  world  that  most  men  should  remain 
in  a  sort  of  enchanted  and  unsuspecting  ignorance. 

"Ignorance  is  the  necessary  condition,  I  do  not  say  of  happiness, 
but  of  existence  itself.  If  we  knew  all  we  could  not  support  life 
an  hour.  The  sentiments  which  make  it  sweet,  or  at  least  tolerable 
for  us,  spring  from  a  lie  and  nourish  themselves  on  illusions."  ^ 

But  for  Anatole  France  himself,  disillusioned  though  he 
be,  life  is  yet  tolerable.     This  is  partly  due  to  a  saving  play 

^  Le  Jardin  d' Epicure,  pp.  26-27. 
2  Ibid.,  pp.  97,  66-67. 
»  Ibid.,  p.  33.    Cf.  p.  81. 


36  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

nf  wit  a  sense  for  comedy,  even  on  the  cosmic  scale.    He 
wol'  MmsS  have  created  the  world  otherwise;    b^h^ 
was  not  charged  with  the  task,  nor  did  the  demiurge  even 
Isk   Ms    advice!    And    he    adds:     "Between    ourselves,   I 
doubt  if  he  has  consulted  the  philosophers  and  men  o 
S  a   all  -    He  finds  no  consolation  in  the  achievements 
of  science     On  the  contrary  he  esteems  the  useless  works 
o    r^an  more  than  the  useful.^    This  is  because  the  latter 
a  e  baserupon  the  misguided  hope  of  indefinite  progress. 
No  -  hat  which  redeems  life  is  the  bitter-sweet,  the  mm- 
Sed  tragedy  and  comedy  of  it,  "serene  and  smiling  grief 
!s  tWs  may  be  felt  by  a  man  of  enlightemnent  and  sensi- 

bility. 

"Irony  and  Pity  are  two  counselors;  the  one  in  smiling  males 
life  amiable-  the  other  which  weeps,  makes  hfe  sacred.  The  Irony 
wS  invoke  is  not  cruel.  It  does  not  mock  either  love  or  beauty 
As  beUevers  who  have  attained  to  a  high  degree  of  mora 
beautv  taste  the  joys  of  renunciation,  so  the  5a.a«<,  persuaded  that 
Si  about  us  is  only  appearance  and  deceit,  is  intoxicated  with  this 
fhiltoplic  melanchoty  and  loses  himself  in  the  deUghts  of  a  calm 

despair." ' 

II.    THE   CONTEMPLATION  OF  NATURE 

In  a  view  such  as  that  which  we  have  just  considered 
there  is  already  a  distinctly  new  motive,  the  sense,  namely, 
of  intellectual  and  esthetic  detachment.  The  picture  is 
indeed  sombre  and  depressing.  But  the  essential  man  keeps 
himself  out  of  the  picture,  and  gets  a  satisfying  sense  of 

emancipation  and  superiority  from  ^^J^'^y.^'^l^'^'X 
templating  it.  We  have  now  to  consider  that  attitudes 
which  the  spectacle  of  the  alien  world  instead  of  inspinng 
manly  endurance  or  bitterness  and  hate,  fills  the  beholder 
with  a  sense  of  self-sufficiency,  a  pride  in  the  capacity  to 
compass  and  endure  so  great  a  truth.    In  so  far  as  I  know 

1  Le  Jardin  d'Epicure,  p.  S3* 

2  Ihid.,  p.  119- 

8  Ihid.,  pp.  122,  136. 


DESPAIR  AND   CONSOLATION 


37 


all  and  in  so  far  as  I  live  in  that  knowledge,  all  that  happens 
is  mine  and  enhances  my  being.     James  Thomson  speaks  of 

''A  perfect  reason  in  the  central  brain, 
Which  hath  no  power,  but  sitteth  wan  and  cold, 
And  sees  the  madness,  and  foresees  as  plainly 
The  ruin  in  its  path,  and  trieth  vainly 
To  cheat  itself  refusing  to  behold." 

But  the  mind  of  which  I  now  speak  is  perfectly  willing  to 
sit  wan  and  cold,  and  to  be  without  power,  provided  only  that 
it  can  behold  and  foresee.     It  matters  not  that  it  foresees  its 
own  private  ruin.     Such  a  mind  has  renounced  its  worldly 
fortunes,  and  is  satisfied  if  it  can  see  the  law  and  nature 
obeying  it,  —  the  perfect  rhythm  and  circle  of  being.     That 
very  inexorable  necessity  of  nature's  laws,  which  fills  the 
worldly-minded  with  dismay,  is  for  the  trained   and  self- 
sufficient  intellect  the  crowning  glory  of  nature.     Of  this 
self-denying  and  austere  gospel,   the  prophet  is   Spinoza, 
who  anticipated  this  spectacle  of  the  alien  world  by  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years.     But  Spinoza  has  had  few  whole- 
hearted followers.     Many  thinkers  of  widely  different  faiths, 
men  so  far  apart  in  genius  and  outlook  as,  for  example, 
Goethe  and  Haeckel,  have  reverently  pronounced  his  name; 
and  many  modern  thinkers,  such  as  those  whom  we  shall 
presently  consider,  have  had  their  Spinozistic  moods.     But 
after  searching  vainly  for  souls  to  whom  the  Spinozistic 
gospel  of  intellectual  contemplation  is  sufficient  for  salva- 
tion, we  find  ourselves  compelled  to  conclude  that  this  gos- 
pel is  not  adapted  to  the  present  age.     It  may  be  for  lack 
of  intellectual  stamina;    or  it  may  be  owing  to  the  enrich- 
ment of  life  by  other  motives  and  interests  which  cry  out 
for  satisfaction.     In  any  case  there  are  few,  if  any,  men  of 
this  age  for  whom  it  is  sufficient  that  laws  should  reign  and 
the  eternal  necessities  unfold  themselves  to  the  eye  of  reason. 
But  if  the  intellectual  motive  is  not  in  itself  sufficient  to 
enable  the  modern  man  to  sustain  the  spectacle  of  the  alien 
world,  there  are  other  accessory  motives  that  may  readily 
be  called  into  play.     Mr.  Santayana  has  said  that: 


38 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


"A  thorough  materialist,  one  bom  to  the  faith,  and  not  half 
plunged  into  it  by  an  unexpected  christening  in  cold  water,  would 
be   iLe   the   superb   Democritus,   a   laughmg   philosopher.    His 
delight  in  a  mechanism  that  can  fall  into  so  many  marvellous  and 
beautiful  shapes,  and  can  generate  so  many  exciting  passions 
should  be  of  the  same  intellectual  quaUty  as  that  which  the  visitor 
feels  in  a  museum  of  natural  history,  where  he  views  the  myriad 
butterflies  in  their  cases,  the  flamingoes  and  shell-fish,  the  mam- 
moths and  gorUlas.    Doubtless  there  were  pangs  m  that  mcalcu- 
lable  Ufe,  but  they  were  soon  over;  and  how  splendid  meantime 
was  the  pageant,  how  infinitely  interesting  the  universal  play,  and 
how  fooUsh  and  inevitable  those  absolute  Httle  passions.    Some- 
what of  that  sort  might  be  the  sentiment  that  materialism  would 
arouse  in  a  vigorous  mind,  active,  joyful,  impersonal    and  m 
respect  to  private  illusions  not  without  a  touch  of  scorn. 

There  has  been  some  attempt  in  the  present  age  to  recover 
this  naive  curiosity  toward  nature,  this  hardy  adventur- 
ousness  and  love  of  novelty.  It  has  been  urged  that  sci- 
entific knowledge  instead  of  dispelling  mystery  has  multi- 
plied and  intensified  it.  Thus  Professor  C.  J.  Keyser,  the 
mathematician,  writes: 

"The  cosmic  times  and  spaces  of  modern  science  are  more 
impressive  and  more  mysterious  than  a  Mosaic  cosmogony,  or 
Plato's  crystal  spheres.  Day  is  just  as  mysterious  as  night,  the 
mystery  of  knowledge  and  understanding  is  more  wonderful  and 
awesome  than  the  darkness  of  the  unknown/*  ^ 

And  Professor  Ernst  Haeckel  writes  more  fully  in  a  simi- 
lar vein.  One  is  reminded  of  the  Chicago  man's  apology  to 
the  Easterner:  ^'We  haven't  gone  in  for  culture  yet,  but 
when  we  do  we'll  make  it  hum."  Well,  toward  the  end  of 
his  book  on  the  stock-yards  of  nature,  Professor  Haeckel 
*^goes  in"  for  religion,  for  what  he  calls  ^^our  momstic 
religion." 

"Surrounding  nature  offers  us  everywhere  a  marvellous  wealth 
of  lovely  and  interesting  objects  of  all  kinds.    In  every  bit  of  moss 

1  Santayana:  Life  of  Reason,  Reason  in  Science,  p.  90. 

2  Science  and  Religion,  p.  49. 


DESPAIR  AND   CONSOLATION 


39 


and  blade  of  grass,  in  every  beetle  and  butterfly  we  find,  when  we 
examine  it  carefully,  beauties  which  are  usually  overlooked. 
Above  all,  when  we  examine  them  with  a  powerful  glass  or,  better 
still,  with  a  good  microscope,  we  find  everywhere  in  nature  a  new 
world  of  inexhaustible  charms.  .  .  .  The  astonishment  with  which 
we  gaze  upon  the  starry  heavens  and  the  microscopic  life  in  a  drop 
of  water,  the  awe  with  which  we  trace  the  marvellous  working  of 
energy  in  the  motion  of  matter,  the  reverence  with  which  we  grasp 
the  universal  dominance  of  the  law  of  substance  throughout  the 
universe  —  all  these  are  part  of  our  emotional  life,  falling  under 
the  heading  of  ^natural  reUgion.'"^ 

This  religion  of  the  astonished  microscopist  is  evidently 
an  attempt  to  invoke  the  aesthetic  powers,  in  order  that 
since  we  cannot  have  things  as  we  would  like  them,  we  may 
enjoy  them  as  they  are.  But  is  is  evident  that  Haeckel  is 
not  a  connoisseur  in  cosmic  art.  His  observations  have  a 
little  of  the  untutored  crudeness  of  the  tyro  who  comments 
on  the  "likeness  "  of  the  portrait,  or  the  pretty  face  of  the 
Madonna.  It  is  the  virtuosity  rather  than  the  beauty  or 
sublimity  of  nature  that  interests  him. 

If  the  scientific  eulogies  of  nature  such  as  these  of  Keyser 
and  Haeckel  faintly  suggest  the  advertisements  of  a  summer 
hotel,  or  the  barker  at  the  side-show  of  a  circus,  it  does  not 
follow  that  this  modern  stoicism  is  wholly  shallow  and 
forced.  Without  doubt  these  are  incidents  in  the  slow  de- 
velopment of  a  richer  and  more  universal  complex  towards 
the  alien  world.  More  convincing  is  W.  K.  Clifford's  rep- 
resentation of  nature  in  his  famous  essay  on  "  Cosmic  Emo- 
tion." ^  He  invites  us  to  regard  nature  as  the  mother  and 
nurse  of  life.  From  nature  we  have  sprung,  and  from  the 
laws  of  nature  we  must  learn  how  to  live.  We  are  not  like 
spoiled  children  to  go  to  nature  for  the  indulgence  of  our 
whims,  but  for  discipline  and  inspiration.  In  other  words 
nature  is  not  alien,  except  in  so  far  as  man  alienates  himself 
by  setting  up  his  own  abstract  and  artificial  purposes  in 

*  The  Riddle  of  the  Universe,  pp.  342,  344. 

*  Lectures  and  Essays,  Vol.  II.  The  phrase  "cosmic  emotion"  originated 
with  Henry  Sidgwick. 


40 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


\ 


defiance  of  it,  and  then  expecting  nature  to  come  around 
to  his  own  side.     The  poets  and  men  of  letters  have  already 
gone   far  towards  maturing   and   disseminating   this  idea. 
In  Emerson's  recognition  of  the  rough  ways  of  nature,  there 
is  no  tone  of  complaint.     Nature  does  not  pamper  us;   but 
none  the  less,  or  perhaps  for  that  very  reason,  nature  is 
good  for  us.     There  is  a  kind  of  brave  heart  that  rejoices 
in  what  is  powerful  and  great  and  independent,  and  that 
worships  nature  for  being  so  invincibly  herself.     There  is  a 
strain  of  this,  along  with  sheer  unreasoning  British  pluck, 
in  Robert  Louis  Stevenson.     It  is  responsible  for  the  finest 
quality  in  Swinburne's  verse.     Walt  Whitman,  with  his  in- 
satiable appetite  for  experience,  has  no  need  of  illusions. 
His  very  homelessness  in  the  immensity  of  nature  is  some- 
thing to  harp  upon  and  exult  in. 

**I  open  my  scuttle  at  night  and  see  the  far-sprinkled  systems. 
And  all  I  see,  multiplied  as  high  as  I  can  cipher,  edge  but  the  rim 

of  the  farther  systems. 
Wider  and  wider  they  spread,  expanding  always  expanding. 
Outward  and  outward,  and  forever  outward."^ 

Maeterlinck  scarcely  belongs  here,  because  of  the  exuber- 
ance of  his  imagination  and  the  vividness  of  his  mystical 
sense.  But  ''Wisdom  and  Destiny"  is  nevertheless  dis- 
tinctly stoical  in  its  cast;  not  austere,  intellectualistic, 
after  the  manner  of  Spinoza,  but  finding  happiness  within 
the  reach  of  every  man  regardless  of  fortune. 

"If  all  who  may  count  themselves  happy  were  to  tell,  very 
simply,  what  it  was  that  brought  happiness  to  them,  the  others 
would  see  that  between  sorrow  and  joy  the  difference  is  but  as 
between  a  gladsome,  enlightened  acceptance  of  life  and  a  hostile, 
gloomy  submission;  between  a  large  and  harmonious  conception 
of  life,  and  one  that  is  stubborn  and  narrow.  'Is  that  all?'  the 
unhappy  would  cry.  '  But  we  too  have  within  us  then,  the  elements 
of  this  happiness?'  Surely,  you  have  them  within  you.  ...  It  is 
true  that  on  certain  external  events  our  influence  is  of  the  feeblest, 
but  we  have  all-powerful  action  on  that  which  these  events  shall 

1  Leaves  of  Grass. 


DESPAIR   AND   CONSOLATION 


41 


VI 


t 


I 


become  in  ourselves  —  in  other  words,  on  their  spiritual  part,  on 
what  is  radiant,  undying  within  them."^ 

All  this  is  plainly  naturalistic  in  its  acceptance  of  physical 
helplessness;  while  doubtfully  so  in  the  reserves  of  spiritual 
freedom  which  are  ascribed  to  the  individual,  and  in  the 
conception  of  "wisdom  "  as  "the  sense  of  the  infinite  ap- 
pHed  to  our  moral  life."^  The  fundamental  naturaHsm  of 
Maeterlinck  lies  in  his  firm  intention  of  treating  with  nature 
on  nature's  own  terms.  He  accepts  once  and  for  all  what 
science  has  to  teach  about  nature.  And  he  does  not  propose 
to  turn  away  from  the  picture.  Like  Whitman,  he  looks 
for  value  in  the  common  experiences,  in  the  very  facts  as 
they  are.  And  like  Clifford  he  proposes  to  acknowledge 
and  claim  his  kinship  with  nature,  and  to  count  upon  this 
kinship  as  a  ground  for  trusting  nature.  Since  the  intel- 
lectual and  the  moral  life  are  in  the  naturalistic  teaching 
the  products  of  nature,  there  must  be  a  secret  S3rnipathy,  a 
sort  of  family  bond,  that  unites  them  with  their  source. 

Such  is  the  philosophy  of  life  which  proposes  to  accept  the 
natural  world  as  it  is;  to  look  it  unfalteringly  in  the  face; 
even  to  claim  it  as  one's  own  and  call  it  good.^ 

III.    THE   COMPENSORY   IMAGINATION 

But  the  more  liberal-minded,  the  more  fastidious  and  cul- 
tivated materialists,  turn  from  the  contemplation  of  nature 
to  the  company  of  their  own  thoughts.  Having  renounced 
the  existent  world  as  aHen  and  incorrigible,  they  turn  in 
upon  themselves  where  there  is  nothing  to  offend  —  where 
nothing  but  standards  and  ideals  may  be  admitted. 

There  are  traces  in  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell's  writings  of  a 
religion  of  contemplation  such  as  we  have  just  examined. 

"For  the  health  of  the  moral  life,"  he  says,  "for  ennobling  the 
tone  of  an  age  or  a  nation,  the  austerer  virtues  have  a  strange 

*  Trans,  by  Alfred  Sutro,  pp.  8-9,  29. 
^  Op.  cU.,  p.  75. 

3  This,  as  I  understand  it,  is  Professor  J.  Dewey's  "democratic  metaphysic." 
Cf.  his  "Maeterh'nck's  Philosophy  of  Life,"  Hibbert  Journal,  July,  191 1,  p.  778. 


? 


42  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

power,  exceeding  the  power  of  those  not  ^'^^-^^^^^^^^ 
thought.    Of  these  austerer  virtues  the  love  of  truth  is  the  chiet. 

But  this  is  said  apropos  of  ^'The  Study  of  Mathematics," 
and  it  is  clear  that  the  truth  which  Mr.  Russell  prizes  as 
an  end  in  itself  is  not  physical  truth,  but  logical  truth^ 
And  the  latter  he  evidently  regards  as  in  some  sense  created 
by  the  intellect.  In  any  case  Mr.  Russell's  rehgion  is  m 
the  main  a  religion  of  withdrawal  and  non-contamination; 
not  a  love  of  nature,  but  an  averted  gaze. 

-Shall  we  worship  Force,  or  shall  we  worship  Goodness?  Shall 
our  God  exist  and  be  evil,  or  shall  he  be  recognized  as  the  creation 
of  our  own  conscience?'' 

-When   without  the  bitterness  of  impotent  rebelhon,  we  have 
learnt  both  to  resign  ourselves  to  the  outward  rule  of  Fate  and  to 
recognize  that  the  non-human  world  is  unworthy  of  our  worship, 
it  becomes  possible  at  last  so  to  transform  and  refashion^  the  un- 
conscious universe,  so  to  transmute  it  in  the  crucible  o   imagma- 
tion,  that  a  new  image  of  shining  gold  replaces  the  old  idol  of 
clav     In  all  the  multiform  facts  of  the  world,  m  the  visual  shapes 
of  trees  and  momitains  and  clouds,  in  the  events  of  the  life  of  man, 
even  in  the  very  omnipotence  of  Death  -  the  insight  of  creative 
ideaUsm  can  find  the  reflection  of  a  beauty  which  its  own  thoughts 
first  made.    In  this  way  mind  asserts  a  subtle  mastery  over  the 
thoughtless  forces  of  Nature.  .  .  .     Bnef  and  powerless  is  Man  s 
Hfe-  on  him  and  all  his  race  the  slow,  sure  doom  falls  pitiless  and 
dark.    Blind  to  good  and  evil,  reckless  of  destruction,  omnipotent 
matter  rolls  on  its  relentless  way;    for  Man  condemned  today  to 
lose  his  dearest,  tomorrow  himself  to  pass  through  [he  gate  of 
darkness,  it  remains  only  to  cherish,  ere  yet  the  blow  falls,  the  lofty 
thoughts  that  ennoble  his  Uttle  day;   disdaining  the  coward  terrors 
of  the  slave  of  Fate,  to  worship  at  the  shrine  that  his  own  hands 
have  bunt;    undismayed  by  the  empire  of  chance,  to  preserve  a 
mind  free  from  the  wanton  tyranny  that  rules  his  outward  life; 
proudly  defiant  of  the  irresistible  forces  that  tolerate,  for  a  moment, 
his  knowledge  and  his  condemnation,  to  sustain  alone,  a  weary  but 
unyielding  Atlas,  the  world  that  his  own  ideals  have  fashioned 
despite  the  trampling  march  of  unconscious  power."  ^ 

1  Philosophical  Essays,  p.  86. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  63,  66-67,  70. 


DESPAIR  AND   CONSOLATION 


43 


Mr.  Russell's  reaction  to  the  events  of  the  war  has  added 
a  poignancy  to  these  words  which  they  did  not  possess 
when  they  were  first  uttered  in  1903.  But  it  is  not  difficult 
to  discern  in  them  the  temperament  of  the  martyr,  as  well 
as  that  sheer  force  of  will  which  needs  no  rational  justifica- 
tion nor  any  compensation  for  hardship  —  that  indomitable 
manliness  which  distinguishes  the  Englishman. 

In  spite  of  so  much  agreement,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  he 
too  accepts  nature  as  mechanical  science  describes  it,  Mr. 
Santayana's  gospel  differs  significantly  from  Mr.  Russell's. 
Mr.  Russell  leaves  the  realm  of  ideals  stark  and  isolated. 
He  is  as  "other-worldly  "  as  the  most  supernatural  mystic. 
But  for  Mr.  Santayana  heaven  has  its  roots  in  earth.  This 
is  very  different  from  asserting  that  earth  has  its  roots  in 
heaven.  Mechanical  law  alone  rules  nature  from  the  be- 
ginning. But  the  ideals  which  the  reason  and  imagination 
create  express  nature.  *^  Religion  is  an  imaginative  echo  of 
things  natural  and  moral." ^  And  ''things  moral,"  it  is  to 
be  observed,  are  for  Mr.  Santayana  only  an  extension  of 
''things  natural."  Thus,  for  example,  the  idea  of  immor- 
tality is  natural  in  the  sense  that  it  springs  from  a  natural 
impulse  and  craving  —  from  the  love  of  life.  But  ideas 
which  thus  express  natural  needs  and  desires  are  not  to  be 
thought  of  as  in  any  sense  knowledge  of  a  real  world  such 
as  they  depict. 

'  "The  only  truth  of  religion  comes  from  its  interpretation  of  life, 
from  its  symbolic  rendering  of  that  moral  experience  which  it 
springs  out  of  and  which  it  seeks  to  elucidate.  Its  falsehood  comes 
from  the  insidious  misunderstanding  which  clings  to  it,  to  the 
effect  that  these  poetic  conceptions  are  not  merely  representations 
of  experience  as  it  is  or  should  be,  but  are  rather  information  about 
experience  or  reality  elsewhere  —  an  experience  and  reality  which, 
strangely  enough,  supply  just  the  defects  betrayed  by  reality 
and  experience  here."  ^ 

1  Poetry  and  Religion,  p.  235.  This  is  what  James  Martineau  has  called 
"mere  self-painting  of  the  yearning  spirit." 

2  The  Life  of  Reason,  Vol.  Ill,  Reason  in  Religion,  p.  11.  Cf.  also  Kallen: 
"Value  and  Existence,"  in  Creative  IrUelligence, 


44  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  what  the  emancipated  mind 
understands  to  be  the  tree  creation  of  his  imagmation,  the 
common  man  Uterally  believes.  This  Mr.  Santayana  re- 
gards as  the  inveterate  error  of  all  ideahsms.  The  com- 
mon man  believes  in  God  as  the  child  believes  in  fairies 
He  has  the  naive  preference  for  the  "  true  story,  for  what 
is  really  so.  Such  compensation  as  the  higher  faculties 
afford  in  a  naturalistic  world  can  be  enjoyed  only  by  the 
aristocracy  of  the  emancipated.  It  would  seem  that  the 
vulgar  mind  must  either  be  confined  to  a  simple  diet  of  the 
literally  true,  or  else  as  a  concession  to  its  weakness,  be 
allowed  to  indulge  in  such  false  beliefs  as  wil  afford  the 
requisite  incentives  and  supports  for  the  moral  hfe  _  There 
is,  as  we  shall  see,  another  way  altogether,  in  which  the 
attention  is  to  be  diverted  from  the  spectacle  of  the  alien 
world  to  the  nearer  and  more  vivid  spectacle  of  human 
progress.'  But  those  who  assume  that  religion  must  be 
founded  upon  a  conception  of  the  cosmic  reality  will  either 
recommend  that  religion  be  abandoned  altogether,  or  they 
will  incline  to  accept  a  double  religion:  for  the  enlightened, 
the  disillusioned  exercise  of  reason  and  imagination;  for  the 
vulgar  such  wholesome  illusions  as  the  enUghtened  shall 
select  for  them. 

»  Cf.  "The  Religion  of  Humanity,"  below,  pp.  iii-nS- 


1 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  CULT  OF   SCIENCE 

Science  both  belittles  man  and  magnifies  him.  When 
science  puts  man  where  he  belongs  in  nature,  man  looks 
very  small  and  very  feeble.  But  what  is  this  science  that 
makes  so  free  with  man?  Evidently  in  some  sense  it  is 
the  work  of  man  himself.  Whatever  superiority  science 
enjoys  through  the  discomfiture  of  man  must  be  credited 
to  the  scientist,  who  is,  curiously  enough,  man.  Man  is 
apparently  on  both  ends  of  the  see-saw.  When  one  end 
goes  up,  the  other  goes  down;  but  man  being  on  both  ends 
is  always  on  top !  I  shall  not  attempt  to  resolve  this  para- 
dox here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  if  the  teachings  or  doc- 
trines of  science  concerning  man  seriously  diminish  his  con- 
fidence and  self-esteem,  the  magnificent  and  overwhelming 
success  of  science  asTus  own  activity  and  his  own  institu- 
tion have  restored  them  again.  It  is  fitting  that  the  very 
instrument  that  inflicted  so  many  grievous  wounds  upon 
religion  should  have  put  new  pride  and  new  hope  in  the 
place  of  those  which  it  shattered.  Science  thus  comes  itself 
to  assume  the  form  of  religion  —  as  something  to  live  by, 
and  as  putting  into^man's  heart  the  courage  and  self-respect 
he  needs,  if  he  is  to  seek  anything  more  than  bare  existence. 
In  the  present  chapter  we  have  to  do  with  the  emotions,  the 
attitudes,  the  aspirations,  the  forms  of  vital  faith  which 
have  been  aroused  in  the  modern  mind  by  the  activities 
of  science. 

I.    THE   METHOD   OF   SCIENCE 

When  I  speak  of  science  I  mean  something  rather  definite. 
I  do  not  mean  merely  knowledge  in  general;  I  mean  me- 
thodical knowledge,  that  co-operative,  systematic  pursuit  of 

45 


46 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE   CULT  OF   SCIENCE 


47 


knowledge  which  employs  an  established  technique,  and 
leads  to  a  consensus  of  experts. 

I  shall  seek  first  to  characterize  this  method  or  technique, 
as  unmethodically  and  untechnically  as  possible/ 

1.  Disinterestedness.  Although,  as  we  shall  presently 
see,  the  scientist  is  entirely  alive  to  the  utility  of  his  work, 
he  proceeds  upon  the  supposition  that  his  work  will  be 
useful  only  provided  he  reserves  the  application  until  after 
he  has  made  the  discovery.  For  man  to  control  nature 
practically,  it  is  necessary  that  nature  should  control  man 
cognitively.  Nature  obeys  only  those  who  serve  her;  who 
have  patience  and  restraint  enough  to  learn  her  ways. 
Scientific  method  has  come,  therefore,  to  signify  a  respect 
for  facts,  in  the  sense  of  that  which  is  independent  of  all 
human  wishes.  It  has  come  to  signify  a  conforming  of 
judgment  to  things  as  they  are,  regardless  of  likes  or  dis- 
likes, hopes  or  fears.  Science  represents  the  specialization 
of  the  theoretical  interest,  which  for  the  time  being  ignores 
every  consideration  but  the  evidence. 

2.  Appeal  to  Experience.    In  the  second  place,  science 
is  empirical  or  experimental.     It  accepts  sense-experience, 
as  the  final  test.    Though  it  uses  the  reason  and  the  imagina- 
tion in  the  forming  of  hypotheses,  it  regards  these  as  ori' 
trial  until  the  verdict  of  sense-experience  can  be  obtained. 
Scientific  method  is  thus  opposed  to  speculation  which  car- 
ries belief  beyond  the  effective  range  of  the  cognitive  facul- 
ties; to  rationaUsm,  which  claims  to  find  in  logical  inference 
a  warrant  for  ignoring  or  exceeding  the  evidence  of  sense; 
and  to  dogmatism,  which  allows  non-theoretical^otives,[ 
such  as  inclination,  habit  or  authority  to  determine  belief.  J^ 

3.  Description.  Finally,  science  has  come  after  a  long 
evolution  of  method,  to  confine  itself  to  description  in  terms 
of  a  formula  or  law.  It  leaves  out  what  common  sense 
would  regard  as  the  explanation.  It  does  not,  for  example, 
insist  on  finding  a  good  reason,  a  purpose,  or  a  justification 
for  things,  but  only  a  uniformity  or  consistency  in  things. 

*  For  a  fuller  account  of  this  matter,  cf.  my  Present  Philosophical  Tendencies ^ 
Ch.  III. 


I 


I 


H 


\ 


It  does  not  refer  things  to  a  power  or  agency  such  as  the 
will  or  God.  It  is  satisfied  to  discover  precisely  in  what 
relations  and  sequences  things  occur.  One  may  regard  this 
procedure  on  the  part  of  science  as  a  mark  of  its  advanced 
enlightenment,  or  as  a  proof  of  its  superficiaHty;^  but  in 
either  case  it  is  by  this  concentration  upon  the  more  limited 
task  of  exact,  and,  so  far  as  possible,  mathematical,  de- 
scription that  science  has  united  all  investigators  in  the  use 
of  one  technique,  and  made  it  possible  to  incorporate  all  of 
their  achievements  in  one  homogeneous  system  of  knowledge. 

4.  The  Cult  of  Scientific  Method.  Now  the  cult  of  science 
is  in  part  simply  the  cultivation  of  this  method  —  the  praise 
and  promotion  of  it,  or  a  devoted  loyalty  to  it.  One  may 
look  upon  scientific  method  as  the  greatest  achievement  of 
the  past;  and  as  affording  the  only  promise  of  human 
advancement.  One  may,  in  short,  like  Comte,  the  great 
French  thinker  of  the  last  century,  regard  it  as  the  index 
of  progress,  and  as  the  central  fact  in  a  philosophy  of  history. 

It  was  this  attitude  regarding  science  that  was  in  part 
responsible  for  the  prolonged  and  deplorable  war  between 
science  and  religion,  in  which  so  much  energy  and  honest 
righteous  indignation  has  been  wasted  in  modern  times. 
Scientific  zealots,  convinced  of  the  supreme  human  value  of 
science,  attacked  in  its  behalf  what  they  thought  to  be  the 
reactionary,  obscurantist  and  obstructive  tactics  of  religion. 
There  was,  as  all  friends  of  religion  must  admit,  no  little 
provocation  for  this  attitude.  Almost  all  the  great  modern 
scientific  discoveries,  such,  notably,  as  the  Darwinian  prin- 
ciple of  natural  selection,  and  the  new  geological  account 
of  the  evolution  of  the  earth,  were  stoutly  resisted  in  the 
name  of  religion. 

But  it  was  not  so  much  the  mere  fact  of  resistance  as  it 
was  the  motives  which  actuated  it  which  aroused  the  ani- 
mus of  the  scientists.  Other  scientists  refused  at  first  to 
accept  Darwinism  and  the  uniformitarian  geology,  but  they 
were  not  attacked,  because  their  refusal  was  based  on  sci- 
entific reasons.    They  were  not  enemies  of  science,  but  only 

*  Cf.  below,  p.  206. 


48 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE   CULT  OF  SCIENCE 


49 


opponents  of  a  particular  doctrine.  They  accepted  the  sci- 
entific program  as  a  whole  while  differing  as  to  certain 
details.  But  religion  seemed  to  the  scientists  to  be  actu- 
ated by  motives  wholly  contrary  to  the  essential  purpose  of 
science,  and,  therefore,  a  serious  menace  to  its  very  existence. 
For  apologists  of  rehgion  refused  to  accept  this  or  that  new 
scientific  doctrine  from  respect  for  authority,  or  by  an  act 
of  faith,  or  because  the  doctrine  was  unpalatable,  or  some- 
times merely  because  it  was  new.  Rehgion  seemed  thus 
to  rally  and  engage  in  its  defense  those  very  motives  against 
which  science  had  had  to  fight  for  its  life.  So  the  issue 
readily  assumed  in  eyes  of  the  scientist,  the  aspect  of  the 
interest  of  humanity.  He  felt  himself  more  than  a  special 
investigator;  he  felt  himself  to  be  the  devotee  of  a  great 
cause. 

Now  a  cause  may  be  strengthened  in  its  hold  upon  its 
devotees  if  it  requires  some  sacrifice  of  them.  The  cause 
of  science  derives  this  additional  element  of  strength,  or  of 
emotional  appeal,  from  the  fact  that  the  scientist  must 
abandon  those  unreasoned  Jielief^,  those  dear  illusions  by 
which  he  comforts  and  encourages  himself.  The  true  sci- 
entist will  deny  himself  this  luxury,  and  strip  himself 
to  those  few  beHefs  which  are  founded  on  evidence.  He 
will  be  simple  and  hardy  in  mind.  He  will  keep  his  love 
of  truth  purged  of  every  ulterior  motive.  He  will  save  his 
soul  not  by  faith  but  by  doubt;  like  Byron  he  will  *'deny 
nothing  but  doubt  everything."  ^  This  he  will  do  not  from 
frivoHty,  or  obstinacy,  but  in  order  to  render  his  mind  a 
perfect  instrument  and  medium  of  truth.  This  attitude  is 
most  fitly  and  most  devoutly  expressed  by  a  writer  to  whom 
we  have  already  referred,  the  English  scientist,  W.  K. 
CHfford: 

"Belief  is  desecrated  when  given  to  unproved  and  unquestioned 
statements  for  the  solace  and  private  pleasure  of  the  believer.  .  .  . 
Whoso  would  deserve  well  of  his  fellows  in  this  matter  will  guard 
the  purity  of  his  belief  with  a  very  fanaticism  of  jealous  care,  lest 
at  any  time  it  should  rest  on  an  unworthy  object,  and  catch  a  stain 

1  Letter  to  F.  Hodgson,  Dec.  4,  181 1. 


I 


which  can  never  be  wiped  away.  .  .  .  If  belief  has  been  accepted  on 
insufficient  evidence  the  pleasure  is  a  stolen  one.  ...  It  is  sinful 
because  it  is  stolen  in  defiance  of  our  duty  to  mankind.  That  duty 
is  to  guard  ourselves  from  such  beliefs  as  from  a  pestilence  which 
may  shortly  master  our  own  body  and  then  spread  to  the  rest  of 
the  town.  ...  It  is  wrong  always,  everywhere,  and  for  everyone, 
to  believe  anything  upon  insufficient  evidence."  ^ 

II.    THE   REVOLT   AGAINST   TRADITION 

I  have  already  referred  in  an  earlier  lecture  to  the  tran- 
siency of  beliefs  in  our  own  day;  and  I  have  already  ex- 
pressed the  opinion  that  this  transiency  is  mainly  due  to 
the  influence  of  science.  Santayana  has  expressed  this  lack 
of  intellectual  steadfastness  very  prettily  in  the  following 
passage: 

.  "These  are  the  Wander] ahre  of  faith;  it  looks  smilingly  at  every 
new  faith,  which  might  perhaps  be  that  of  a  predestined  friend;  it 
chases  after  any  engaging  stranger;  it  even  turns  up  again  from 
time  to  time  at  home,  full  of  a  new  tenderness  for  all  it  had  aban- 
doned there.    But  to  settle  down  would  be  impossible  now."  ^ 

Why  should  ]the  vogue  of  science  incline  the  mind  to 
radicahsm?  It  is  due,  I  think,  to  science's  suspicion  of 
every  affirmation  that  is  not  freshly  tested  by  experience. 
It  is  not  that  science  is  opposed  to  any  particular  doctrine 
among  estabhshed  beliefs.  But  the  very  fact  that  a  doctrine, 
whatever  it  is,  is  established  makes  it  questionable  to  science. 
If  a  doctrine  is  estabhshed,  it  is  probably  accepted  on  other 
than  grounds  of  evidence :  because  of  habit,  or  custom,  or  in- 
ertia, or  because  of  sentimental  preference,  or  because  it  flat- 
ters men's  hopes  and  fulfils  their  desires.  Even  so,  it  majy 
of  course,  be  scientifically  true.  But  it  is  more  probable, 
according  to  the  scientific  mind,  that  the  unscientific  grounds 
and  motives  of  the  behef  are  merely  blinding  men  to  the 
lack  of  proper  evidence.  Its  decorated  sham  buttresses 
are  conceaUng  the  real  lack  of  structural  support.     So  the 

*  Quoted  by  William  James,  Will  To  Believe,  p.  8. 
^  Santayana:  Winds  of  Doctrine ,  p.  23. 


so 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


scientific  mind  feels  that  the  presumption  is  against  what- 
ever is  established  and  traditional,  and  declares  war  upon 
it,  proposing  a  general  intellectual  house-cleaning  and  reno- 
vation. Any  human  motive,  even  when  it  is,  like  this, 
originally  a  negative  motive,  can  assume  the  role  of  an  ideal, 
and  receive  the  exaggerated  emphasis  of  fanatic  zeal.         \ 

I.  Art  and  Literature.  This  revolt  against  tradition  ^i^s 
perhaps  exhibited  itself  most  unmistakably  in  modern  art 
and  hterature.  It  is  this  spirit,  for  example,  that  is  com- 
mon to  movements  otherwise  so  far  apart  as  romanticism 
and  realism.  Both  are  opposed  to  classicism,  which  is  art 
according  to  law  and  order.  Classicism  represents  ortho- 
doxy and  respectabiHty.  Romanticism,  on  the  other  hand, 
means  that  the  artist  is  to  trust  his  own  emotions,  and  in 
that  sense  be  genuine,  heartfelt.  It  also  means  that  in- 
stead of  pretending  to  enjoy  or  to  appreciate  according  to 
existing  canons  of  taste,  he  is  to  use  his  imagination  to 
create  what  is  honestly  to  his  hking.  Romanticism  is  thus 
revolutionary  and  iconoclastic.  But  reahsm  is  equally  so, 
though  it  moves  in  a  different  direction.  The  romanticist  is 
to  be  true  to  himself;  the  reahst  to  the  facts  of  the  world 
as  he  observes  them.  And  so  it  is  with  other  and  varying 
motives  in  modern  art,  with  impressionism,  post-impres- 
sionism, cubism  and  futurism. 

If  you  have  difficulty,  as  I  have,  in  understanding  how 
things  so  bizarre,  so  outrageous,  so  meaningless  as  some 
ultra-modern  paintings  can  have  value,  do  not  try  to  go 
beyond  the  very  fact  that  gives  you  offense.  What  you 
are  unconsciously  trying  to  do  is  to  interpret  them  in  terms  of 
what  to  you  is  law  and  order.  If  they  had  meaning  for  you 
then  that  in  itself  would  signify  that  they  were  expressions 
of  old  and  familiar  ideas,  that  they  suited  your  habits. 
What  gives  them  value  in  the  eyes  of  their  creators  is  the 
fact  that  they  are  bizarre,  outrageous  and  meaningless. 
These  men  are  less  concerned  with  new  ideas  than  they 
are  with  getting  rid  of  the  old.  They  are  anarchists  like 
their  fellow-revolutionists  in  politics,  to  whom  law  and  order 
signify  the  dead,  oppressive  weight  of  something  arbitrary 


THE   CULT  OF   SCIENCE 


51 


and  conventional.  The  most  consistent  exponent  of  this 
attitude  is  Max  Stirner,  who  turns  against  every  correct 
and  venerated  thing,  such  as  the  state,  the  family,  the  law, 
even  against  the  axioms  of  democracy  and  humanity. 

2.  Decadence.  This  same  motive,  in  my  judgment,  pro- 
vides an  explanation  of  such  excesses  as  have  been  called 
''Decadence,"  in  French  culture.  It  is  lawlessness  and 
irreverence  gone  mad,  a  breaking  away  from  every  ancient 
taboo,  even  from  every  natural  feeling,  so  far  as  it  can  be 
suspected  of  narrowing  and  constraining  life. 

I  do  not,  for  example,  accept  Max  Nordau's  famous 
theory  of  ^'  degeneration,'*  according  to  which  such  phe- 
nomena as  we  have  just  referred  to  are  due  to  fatigue,  or 
neurasthenia,  especially  in  France  after  her  disastrous  wars 
of  the  Nineteei^th  Century: 

"In  the  civilized  world  there  obviously  prevails  a  twilight  mood 
which  finds  expression,  amongst  other  ways,  in  all  sorts  of  odd 
aesthetic  fashions.  All  these  new  tendencies,  realism  or  naturalism, 
"decadentism,'*  neo-mysticism  and  their  sub- varieties,  are  mani- 
festations of  degeneration  and  hysteria,  and  identical  with  the 
mental  stigmata  which  the  observations  of  clinicists  have  unques- 
tionably established  as  belonging  to  these.  But  both  degeneration 
and  hysteria  are  the  consequences  of  the  excessive  organic  wear 
and  tear  suffered  by  the  nations  through  the  immense  demands  on 
their  activity,  and  through  the  rank  growth  of  large  towns."  ^ 

There  are  obvious  and  conclusive  objections  to  this  view. 
It  does  not  explain  the  widespread  character  of  the  move- 
ment, its  appearance  not  only  in  Italy  among  the  *' Verists," 
but  in  northern  and  relatively  phlegmatic  countries,  in 
England  with  Oscar  Wilde,  in  Germany  with  Gerhart  Haupt- 
mann,  and  in  Sweden  with  Strindberg.  Furthermore  Nor- 
dau's  view  does  not  account  for  the  absence  of  such  phe- 
nomena in  Germany  after  the  Thirty  Years  War,  or  in 
France  after  the  Hundred  Years  War. 
*  There  is,  I  think,  a  much  simpler  explanation  in  the  fact 
that  reactions  are  natural  excessive,   and  attended  with 

*  Degeneration,  English  translation  of  second  edition,  p.  43. 


52 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


strong  emotion.  There  is  a  kind  of  twice-born  soul  to  whom 
the  supreme  crisis  is  the  loss  of  his  faith.  We  read  in  Jean- 
Christophe^  that 

"As  with  faith,  so  the  loss  of  faith  is  often  equally  a  flood  of 
grace,  a  sudden  light.  Reason  counts  for  nothing;  the  smallest 
thing  is  enough  —  a  word,  silence,  the  sound  of  bells.  A  man 
walks,  dreams,  expects  nothing.  Suddenly  the  world  crumbles 
away.  All  about  him  is  in  ruins.  He  is  alone.  He  no  longer 
believes."  ^ 

Usually  such  a  rupture  with  traditional  and  established 
things  leaves  behind  it  a  permanent  mood  of  disenchant- 
ment. *^I  woke,"  says  Thomson,  ''from  day  dreams  to 
this  real  night."  ^    Similarly  Byron  asks 

"...  but  what  is  Hope?  Nothing  but  the  paint  on  the  face  of 
Existence;  the  least  touch  of  Truth  rubs  it  off,  and  then  we  see 
what  a  hollow-cheeked  harlot  we  have  got  hold  of."  ^ 

But  the  rejection  of  tradition  and  convention  readily 
takes  the  form,  not  of  a  regret  for  what  is  lost,  but  of  an 
exaggerated  interest  in  the  novel  and  unconventional.  Just 
as  the  boy  who  breaks  from  restraint  exults  in  profanity  and 
truculence,  so  men  of  letters  such  as  Baudelaire  and  Zola, 
in  their  anxiety  to  demonstrate  the  completeness  of  their 
emancipation,  have  made  a  positive  cult  of  what  is  dis- 
reputable to  the  orthodox  conscience  or  repugnant  to  the 
orthodox  taste. 

3.  The  Cult  of  Veracity.  A  still  more  positive  tone  is 
given  to  this  revolt  against  tradition,  in  what  may  be 
called  the  cult  of  veracity.  See  the  world  as  it  is;  and  have 
the  courage  to  keep  your  eyes  open.  Don't  sentimentalize 
the  facts  to  make  them  more  palatable.  Know  the  worst 
(it  seems  usually  to  be  assumed  that  the  facts  are  worst!). 
Paint  what  you  really  see;  not  what  you  think  you  see,  or 
the  conventional  interpretation  of  what  you  see.  Train  your 
eye  to  a  purely  sensuous  view  of  things.    Thus  Rodin  says: 

1  P.  238. 

2  J.  Thomson,  City  of  Dreadful  Night,  p.  150. 
»  Letter  to  T.  Moore,  Oct.  28,  X815. 


THE   CULT  OF  SCIENCE 


S3 


"When  an  artist  for  the  purpose  of  embellishing  nature  adds 
green  to  the  springtime,  rose  to  the  dawn,  red  to  young  lips,  he 
creates  ugliness  because  he  lies.  When  he  softens  the  grimace  of 
pain,  the  flabbiness  of  old  age,  the  hideousness  of  the  perverse, 
when  he  arranges  Nature,  when  he  veils  her,  disguises  her,  when 
he  softens  her  in  order  to  please  an  ignorant  pubUc,  he  creates 
ugliness  because  he  is  afraid  of  the  truth."  ^ 

Don't  be  prudish  or  reserved.  Thus  George  Moore  tells 
his  whole  story  as  Rousseau  did;  with  particular  fullness  of 
detail  in  just  those  parts  which  shame  or  conscience  or 
custom  would  ordinarily  keep  hidden. 

This  worship  of  truth  appears  in  its  maddest  and  most 
heroic  form  in  the  figure  of  RoUand's  Jean-Christophe,  who 
goes  about  the  world  assaulting  lies  and  uncovering  h3^oc- 
risies.  Every  national  culture,  every  human  creed  is  woven 
of  falsehood;  the  whole  system  of  the  day  into  which  the 
youth  are  ushered  is  founded  on  pretence  and  perjury. 

"  Every  race,  every  art  has  its  hypocrisy.  The  world  is  fed  with 
a  Uttle  truth  and  many  Ues.  The  human  mind  is  feeble:  pure 
truth  agrees  with  it  but  ill:  its  religion,  its  morality,  its  states,  its 
poets,  its  artists,  must  all  be  presented  to  it  swathed  in  lies.  These 
lies  are  adapted  to  the  mind  of  each  race:  they  vary  from  one  to 
the  other:  it  is  they  that  make  it  so  difficult  for  nations  to  under- 
stand each  other,  and  so  easy  for  them  to  despise  each  other. 
Truth  is  the  same  for  all  of  us:  but  every  nation  has  its  own  he 
which  it  calls  its  idealism;  every  creature  therein  breathes  it  from 
birth  to  death:  it  has  become  a  condition  of  Ufe:  there  are  only  a 
few  men  of  genius  who  can  break  free  from  it  through  heroic 
moments  of  crisis,  where  they  are  alone  in  the  free  world  of  their 
thoughts.  .  .  .  Through  education,  and  through  everything  that  he 
sees  and  hears  about  him,  a  child  absorbs  so  many  Ues  and  blind 
folUes  mixed  with  the  essential  verities  of  hfe,  that  the  first  duty  of 
the  adolescent  who  wishes  to  grow  into  a  healthy  man  is  to  sacrifice 
everything."  ^ 

^  Extracted  from  the  conversations  with  Gteell,  published  in  VArt  in  191 1, 
by  Flaccus,  Artists  and  Thinkers,  p.  28.  The  same  devotion  to  truth,  even 
though  ugly,  appears  in  the  etchings  of  Felicien  Rops.     Cf.  Ibid.,  pp.  33  ff. 

*  Jean-Christophe,  pp.  367,  375. 


1 


54 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


III.    AGNOSTICISM 


THE   CULT  OF   SCIENCE 


55 


It  is  characteristic  of  the  rigorous  scientist  that  he  is  more 
concerned  with  his  mastery  than  with  the  extent  of  his 
domain.  He  does  not  claim  to  know  everything;  but  rather 
that,  so  far  as  it  goes,  his  is  the  only  genuine  knowledge. 
He  is  more  concerned  with  the  quaUty  than  with  the  quan- 
tity of  knowledge.  He  is  the  champion  of  standards  of 
thoroughness  and  accuracy.  In  other  words,  there  is  a 
motive  of  self-limitation  or  restraint  in  science,  just  as 
there  is  in  art.  He  is  perpetually  accusing  the  philosopher 
and  religious  believer  of  claiming  to  know  everything,  while 
knowing  nothing  well.  He,  on  the  other  hand,  proposes 
to  annex  territory  only  as  rapidly  as  he  can  bring  it  under 
cultivation.  He  works  from  a  center,  knowing  as  he  goes, 
and  always  acknowledging  the  sharp  and  narrow  limits  of 
his  achievement  up  to  date.  He  might,  perhaps,  express 
this  by  saying  that  he,  having  an  established  method  and 
technique,  knew  the  difference  between  what  he  knew  and 
what  he  did  not  know. 

This  self-limitation  or  avowed  relativity  on  the  part  of 
science  has  found  expression  in  two  terms.  The  older, 
Comtean  term  ^'positivism"  expresses  the  resolve  of  science 
to  operate  within  the  limits  of  experience,  to  abide  by  the 
evidence  of  experience,  and  to  recognize  nothing  as  knowl- 
edge which  is  not  thus  empirically  tested  and  verified. 
Positivism  is  the  scientist's  credo.  '^  Agnosticism,"  on  the 
other  hand,  is  Huxley's  name  for  the  scientist's  act  of  re- 
nunciation. It  is  his  veiled  backward  glance  at  the  for- 
bidden land  that  lies  beyond  experience.  Positivism  sig- 
nifies, ''This  I  can  know,  and  such  knowledge  is  the  only 
knowledge."  Agnosticism  signifies,  "This  I  cannot  know; 
and  the  knowledge  of  it  being  in  principle  impossible,  I 
shall  not  attempt  to  know  it." 

Agnosticism  was  the  greatest  of  the  secular  faiths  of 
England  in  the  Victorian  period,  and  from  its  ranks  were 
recruited  the  most  formidable  of  the  English  critics  of  ortho- 
doxy during  the  era  of  the  war  between  science  and  religion. 


Among  writers  of  prominence  in  whom  this  motive  was 
more  or  less  dominant  were  Spencer,  Tyndall,  Huxley,  John 
Stuart  Mill  and  his  father  James  Mill,  Grote,  Harriet  Mar- 
tineau,  George  Eliot  and  Leslie  Stephen.^  There  is,  I  think, 
some  significance  in  this  flourishing  of  agnosticism  m  Eng- 
land. It  is  essentially  a  compromise  doctrine.  In  this 
view  the  rigors  of  science  are  mitigated  by  a  wistful  glance 
toward  the  metaphysical  Eden  from  which  the  thinker  has 
voluntarily  banished  himself.  His  moral  and  religious  dis- 
illusionment is  prevented  from  taking  radical  or  blasphe- 
mous forms  by  a  continuance  of  the  old  sentiments.  And 
in  place  of  the  irresponsibility  and  aloofness  of  the  sceptic 
the  agnostic  feels  the  sobering  influence  of  a  mystery  which 
he  can  neither  penetrate  nor  exorcise. 

The  master  of  the  agnostic  faith  is  Herbert  Spencer,  and 
its  Bible  is  this  writer's  First  Principles.  According  to 
Spencer  the  very  rigor  of  scientific  method  serves  to  hmit 
its  scope.  It  is  not  that  there  is  another  sort  of  knowledge, 
such  as  metaphysics,  with  which  to  piece  it  out;  but  that 
knowledge  itself  has  both  its  positive  and  its  negative  as- 
pects. The  scientist,  in  short,  knows  both  what  he  knows 
and  what  he  does  not  know. 

"The  progress  has  been,"  says  Spencer,  "as  much  toward  the 
establishment  of  a  positively  unknown  as  toward  the  establishment 
of  a  positively  known.  .  .  .  Positive  knowledge  does  not,  and 
never  can,  fill  the  whole  region  of  possible  thought.  At  the  utter- 
most reach  of  discovery  there  arises,  and  must  ever  arise,  the 
question:  What  lies  beyond? "  ^ 

^  In  this  inevitable  recognition  by  science  of  a  not  yet 
known,  —  and  since  the  difficulty  is  inherent  in  the  very 
nature  of  scientific  method,  of  a  never  to  be  known,  —  in 
this  inexhaustibiUty  of  human  ignorance,  lies,  according  to 
Spencer,  the  fundamental  reconciliation  of  science  and  re- 
ligion. Religion  has  always  had  the  unknown  as  its  object; 
that  is  the  one  thing  common  to  all  religions.     And  of  this, 

1  The  best  defense  of  the  position  is  to  be  found  in  Leslie  Stephen's  An 
Agnostic's  Apology. 

2  First  Principles,  pp.  9i»  i3- 


56 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


its  own  favorite  object,  religion  will  never  be  robbed  by 

science. 

''May  we  not  without  hesitation  affirm  that  a  sincere  recognition 
of  the  truth  that  our  own  and  all  other  existence  is  a  mystery 
absolutely  and  forever  beyond  our  comprehension  contains  more 
of  true  religion  than  all  the  dogmatic  theology  ever  written?  .  .  . 
If  knowledge  cannot  monopolize  consciousness  —  if  it  must  always 
continue  possible  for  the  mind  to  dwell  upon  that  which  transcends 
knowledge  —  then  there  can  never  cease  to  be  a  place  for  something 
of  the  nature  of  religion;  since  religion  under  all  its  forms  is  dis- 
tinguished from  everything  else  in  this,  that  its  subject  matter  is 
that  which  passes  the  sphere  of  experience/'  ^ 

Religion  is,  of  course,  more  than  the  mere  idea  of  the 
unknown,  it  is  a  sentiment  entertained  toward  the  un- 
known,—  a  sentiment  finding  a  sphere  for  its  exercise  ''in 
that  nescience  which  must  ever  remain  the  antithesis  to 
science.''  ^  What  is  meant  by  this  sentiment  appears  more 
explicitly  in  the  closing  paragraph  of  Tyndall's  famous 
Belfast  Address: 

''And  if  .  .  .  the  human  mind,  \vith  the  yearning  of  a  pilgrim 
for  his  distant  home,  will  still  turn  to  the  Mystery  from  which  it 
has  emerged,  seeking  so  to  fashion  it  as  to  give  unity  to  thought 
and  faith;  so  long  as  this  is  done,  not  only  without  intolerance  or 
bigotry  of  any  kind,  but  with  the  enUghtened  recognition  that 
ultimate  fixity  of  conception  is  here  unattainable,  and  that  each 
succeeding  age  must  be  held  free  to  fashion  the  mystery  in  accord- 
ance with  its  own  needs  —  then,  casting  aside  all  the  restrictions 
of  Materialism,  I  would  affirm  this  to  be  a  field  for  the  exercise  of 
what,  in  contrast  with  the  knowing  faculties,  may  be  called  the 
creative  faculties  of  man." 

And  in  a  later  article  this  writer  explains  himself  further: 

"When  I  attempt  to  give  the  power  which  I  see  manifested  in 
the  Universe  an  objective  form,  personal  or  otherwise,  it  slips  away 
from  me,  declining  all  intellectual  manipulation.  I  dare  not,  save 
poetically,  use  the  pronoun  'He'  regarding  it;  I  dare  not  call  it  a 
*Mind' ;  I  refuse  to  call  it  even  a  '  Cause.'    Its  mystery  overshadows 

*  First  Principles^  pp.  96-97,  13. 
2  Ibid.f  p.  14. 


THE  CULT  OF  SCIENCE 


57 


me;  but  it  remains  a  mystery,  while  the  objective  frames  which 
some  of  my  neighbors  try  to  make  it  fit  seem  to  me  to  distort  and 
desecrate  it."  ^ 

Professor  C.  J.  Keyser,  in  his  essay,  ''Science  and  Re- 
ligion," has  recently  offered  an  elaborate  argument  against 
the  human  possibility  of  knowing  everything,^  since  the 
"unchartered  region  of  human  experience"  (which  Profes- 
sor Gilbert  Murray  assigns  to  religion  in  his  Four  Stages  of 
Greek  Religion)  is  limitless  and  infinite.  Hence,  Professor 
Keyser  concludes,  if  all  that  religion  requires  is  ignorance, 
it  need  never  fear  being  put  out  of  business  by  science. 

Now    while  Tyndall  was  unwilling  to  characterize  the 
mystery  as  a  "cause"  he  did  not  hesitate  to  characterize 
it  as  a  "Power,"  manifesting  itself  in  the  Universe.     The 
fact  is  that  agnosticism  is  a  sort  of  metaphysics,  of  the 
most  metaphysical  sort.     It  rests  upon  a  very  non-scien- 
tific conception  of  substance  and  of  causality,  conceptions 
that  were  abandoned  long  ago  for  the  purposes  of  science. 
Agnosticism  provides  a  sort  of  metaphysical  limbo,  a  heaven, 
a  space  which  the  imagination  promptly  fills.     The  Western 
imagination  and  emotionality  is  too  lusty  to  preserve  the 
scrupulous  reserve  of  the  Japanese  Shintoist,  of  whom  the 
poet  says:   "Not  knowing  what  it  is  silent  tears  he  sheds." 
This  nothingness  is  readily  replaced  by  the  Ether  of  Lord 
Kelvin,  or  by  the  Energy  of  Ostwald  or  Haeckel,  or  by 
the  Force  of  Spencer  himself.     These  substances  thus  allo- 
cated the  domain  once  ruled  by  God,  soon  take  on  a  vaguely 
and  equivocally  spiritual  character.     It  is  a  short  step  to 
the  avowed  spiritualism  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge.     Agnosticism 
thus  permits  or  even  encourages  a  species  of  spiritual  phil- 
osophy which  nourishes  itself  on  the  crumbs  of  comfort 
that  fall  from  the  scientists'  table.^ 

IV.    POWER  AND  PROGRESS  THROUGH  SCIENCE 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  hold  at  arm's  length  and  scrutinize 
the  ideas  that  are  closest  to  us.     Or,  to  change  the  meta- 

1  The  Rev.  James  Martineau  and  the  Belfast  Address,  p.  244. 

2  Cf.  below,  pp.  190-192. 


58 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


phor,  it  is  hard  for  us  to  sense  the  peculiar  quality  of  the 
medium  in  which  we  habitually  live.  Even  if  we  do  sense  it, 
it  is  hard  for  us  to  realize  that  it  is  peculiar.  Such  is  the 
case  with  the  idea  to  which  I  wish  now  to  invite  your  atten- 
tion. The  greatest  of  all  modern  ideas,  in  its  originality,  in 
its  widespread  adoption,  and  in  its  far-reaching  importance, 
is,  I  believe,  the  idea  that  man  can  make  his  way  through 
all  the  difficulties  and  dangers  that  beset  him,  by  means  of 
applied  science  or  technology.  This  idea  is  so  much  of  a 
commonplace  that  it  is  difficult  to  conjure  with  it.  But  it 
is  not  a  universal,  or  even  an  old  idea.  The  Greeks  and 
Romans  were  on  the  whole  of  the  opinion  that  the  funda- 
mental nature  of  things  is  fixed  once  and  for  all.  There  are 
changes,  to  be  sure,  and  vast  changes  extending  over  great 
stretches  of  time;  but  they  are  cyclical  rather  than  progres- 
sive, so  that  the  world  is  none  the  less  marking  time.  The 
model  of  nature  for  the  Greeks  was  the  stellar  system  with 
its  periodic  and  as  they  thought  circular  motions,  in  which 
change  is  taken  up  into  eternity. 

I  do  not,  of  course,  deny  that  there  was,  especially  in  the 
later  Hellenistic  age  of  science,  some  looking  forward  to  a 
future  that  shall  remedy  and  perfect  the  present.  But  W. 
K.  Clifford  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding,  it  was,  I  believe, 
the  Greek  idea  that  nature  was  a  nurse  and  a  school  and  an 
object  of  love  or  contemplation,  rather  than  a  source  of 
powers  and  tools  for  man  to  manipulate.^  In  the  Orient 
there  is  added  to  this  cyclical,  recurrent  view  of  nature,  a 
sense  of  its  overwhelming  immensity.  Man  can  at  best 
scratch  its  surface,  and  he  might  better  occupy  himself 
with  the  saving  of  his  soul.  The  audacious,  profane,  or 
possibly  shallow  and  fatuous  idea,  that  man  can  himself 
wield  the  thunder  bolts  and  drive  the  chariot  of  the  sun,  is 
a  modern  European  idea.  It  is  essentially  the  idea  of  Sir 
Francis  Bacon;  not  that  Bacon  made  it  famous,  but  rather 
that  it  made  Bacon  famous.     ''The  real  and  legitimate  goal 

1  Cf.  W.  K.  Clifford,  Lectures  and  Essays,  II,  p.  264. 


THE  CULT  OF  SCIENCE 


59 


of  the  sciences,'^  said  this  prophet,  ''is  the  endowment  of 
human  life  with  new  inventions  and  riches."  ^ 

A  recent  writer  on   "Francis  Bacon  and   the   Modern 
Spirit "  has  said: 

"What,  then,  is  the  modem  spirit?  There  are,  it  seems  to  me 
four  cognate  ideas  which  go  to  make  up  the  concept  of  modem  I 
do  not  present  them  either  as  final  or  as  complete.  I  present  them 
as  tentative  and  partial.  They  are  the  ideas  of  progress,  of  control, 
of  utility,  and  of  responsibUity.  And  these  are  just  the  ideas  we 
find  so  conspicuously  emphasized  in  the  writings  of  Bacon. 

We  find  the  general  idea  of  power  and  progress  through 
science  here  analyzed  into  four  subordinate  ideas.     There 
is  first  the  buoyancy  and  energy  of  the  modern  world  as 
this  expresses  itself  in  the  idea  of  progress.     I  have  called 
it  an  "idea";    but  it  is  not  a  generalization  or  inference 
from  the  past,  so  much  as  one  of  those  beliefs  that  spring 
from  an  act  of  will.     Few  moderns  could  give  you  very  con- 
vincing historical  evidence  that  the  worid  is  growing  better; 
but  virtually  all  will  declare  their  intention,  so  far  as  m 
them  Ues,  of  making  it  better.     The  second  is  the  idea  that 
a  cause  discovered  is  a  cause  controlled;   that  by  patiently 
waiting  for  nature  to  disclose  herself  man  can  in  the  end 
turn  the  tables,  and  use  nature  against  herself.     The  third 
idea  is  complementary  to  the  foregoing.     It  is  the  idea  that 
only  those  things  which  can  be  controlled  by  science,  the 
welfare  and  happiness  of  men  so  far  as  conditioned  by 
nature,  really  count  as  good  and  evil.    And  fourthly  there 
is  man's  sense  that  through  science  he  is  the  responsible 
and  competent  maker  of  his  own  destiny.    In  short,  the 
Baconian  faith  is  man's  sense  of  his  power  through  natural 
science  to  control  and  better  his  own  external  fortunes,  these 
being  of  paramount  importance  in  life. 

This  philosophy  of  Ufe  has  steadily  strengthened  its  hold 
upon  the  European  mind.  It  was  developed  by  philoso- 
phers of  history,  such  as  Turgot,  Condorcet  and  Priestley 

1  Novum  Organum,  Bk.  I,  Aphorism  LXXXI. 

2  M.  T.  McClure,  Journal  of  PhUosophy,  Psychology  and  Sctenttfic  Method, 

Vol.  xiv  (191 7) »  P-  522. 


6o 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  It  was  carried  to  extravagant 
lengths  by  the  early  French  socialists,  Saint  Simon  and 
Fourier  in  the  early  Nineteenth  Century. 

"The  optimism  of  Fourier  went  as  far  as  to  anticipate  the  time 
when  the  sea  would  be  turned  by  man's  ingenuity  into  lemonade, 
when  there  would  be  thirty-seven  million  poets  as  great  as  Homer, 
thirty-seven  million  writers  as  great  as  Moliere,  thirty-seven 
million  men  of  science  as  great  as  Newton."  ^ 

The  great  influence  of  Auguste  Comte  did  much  to  dis- 
seminate this  philosophy  and  to  give  it  philosophical  dig- 
nity in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  until  it  became  allied  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  century  with  the  great  doctrine  of 
Evolution. 

But  its  hold  on  the  contemporary  mind  is  not  due  so  much 
to  the  philosophers  or  to  other  theorizers  and  prophets,  as 
it  is  to  the  amazing  triumphs  of  applied  science.  The 
Baconian  dream  seems  actually  to  be  in  process  of  coming 
true.  Bridges,  cables,  automobiles,  antitoxines  and  aero- 
planes are  more  convincing  than  disquisitions  on  scientific 
method.  Furthermore,  the  rate  of  scientific  advancement  is 
so  rapid  that  in  the  short  span  of  a  single  human  Hfe  the 
whole  aspect  of  life  is  revolutionized.  Marvel  has  succeeded 
marvel  so  rapidly  within  the  memory  of  living  men,  that 
their  imaginations  have  been  fired,  and  their  hopes  raised, 
until  nothing  is  any  longer  called  impossible  or  incredible. 
Thus  the  older  idea  according  to  which  man  was  meta- 
physically superior  to  nature,  of  another  origin,  sphere  and 
destiny,  has  in  many  minds  been  replaced  by  the  idea  of 
man  as  the  moulder  of  nature,  as  one  who  in  the  midst  of 
nature,  through  his  continuity  and  contact  with  nature, 
divines  her  secrets  and  takes  the  reins  into  his  own  hands. 

Of  all  the  pre-wartime  creeds  of  Europe  this  is  perhaps  the 
one  which  has  been  most  disturbed  by  the  war.  To  some 
minds  the  war  seemed  the  direct  outcome  of  a  preoccupation 
with  those  material  and  industrial  interests  which  tech- 
nology has  done  most  to  promote.     The  excesses  and  hor- 

*  Bury:  History  of  Free  Thought ,  p.  226. 


THE  CULT  OF  SCIENCE 


61 


rors  of  war  have  been  made  possible  by  the  invention  and 
skill  of  scientists.  That  nation,  Germany,  which  had  car- 
ried science,  both  pure  and  appUed,  to  the  ^ighest^pitch 
cultivation,  was  the  nation  most  reprobated  both  or  the 
inception  of  the  war  and  for  its  atrocities.  High  explosives 
poison  gases,  monstrous  submarines  seemed  to  be  as  ogical 
Tsequel  to  the  supremacy  of  science,  as  were  artificial  ferti- 
lizers, anesthetics  and  ships  of  commerce.  Saence  meant 
power,  yes;  but  power  for  evil  as  logically  and  as  readily  as 

power  for  good.  -  , 

There  has,  I  think,  been  for  fifty  years  and  more  a  false 
complacency  due  to  the  superficial  successes  of  science.     I 
do  not  for  a  moment  wish  to  suggest  that  man  wiU  abandon 
or  relax  his  control  over  physical  forces.    Quite  the  con- 
trarv     I  foresee  not  only  a  more  extensive  control  of  phys- 
ical  nature,   but  a  more  deHcate  control  that  will  carry 
technology  even  into  those  complexly  and  sensitively  organ- 
ized parts  of  nature  where  the  mind  dwells  -  where  are  to  be 
found  the  vital  roots  of  human  conduct  and  character.     But 
mankind  will  not,  I  think,  soon  forget  that  there  is  httk 
virtue  in  the  control  of  forces,  if  they  are  not  subordinated 
to  a  wise  and  beneficent  policy.     Deeper  and  incomparably 
more  difiicult  are  the  problems  of  ends  and  Purposes,  by 
which  warring  interests  may  be  harmomzed  and  unified,  and 
the  powers  of  nature  harnessed  to  programs  of  socia    re- 
construction in  which  every  interest  shall  find  its  due  place 
Progress,  even  secular  worldly  progress,  is  not  entirely,  or 
even  mainly  a  matter  of  the  control  of  physical  nature 
The  most  enlightened  exponents  of  the  Bacoman  ideal  have 
seen  this  clearly,  and  have  provided  for^  the  more  authon- 
tative  r61e  of  the  philosophical  and  social  sciences.     Thus 
Professor  Hobhouse  has  written: 

"Only  if  mind  should  once  reach  the  pomt  at  which  it  could 
control  all  the  conditions  of  its  life,  could  this  danger  (of  its  d^- 
Satfon  and  lapse)  be  permanently  averted.  Now  it  seemed  to 
me  that  it  is  precisely  on  this  line  that  modem  civilization  has  made 
T^l^:iLc..  tL  through  science  it  is  begmning  t^^^^^^^^^^ 
the  physical  conditions  of  Ufe,  and  that  on  the  side  of  ethics  and 


62 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


religion  it  is  forming  those  ideas  of  the  unity  of  the  race,  and  of  the 
subordination  of  law,  morals,  and  social  constitutions  generally  to 
the  needs  of  human  development,  which  are  the  conditions  of  the 
control  that  is  required."  ^ 

*  Development  and  Purpose^  pp.  xxii-xxiii. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE   SCIENCE   OF   MAN 

We  have  so  far  been  considering  ways  in  which  science 
itself  has  become  the  source  of  inspiration  or  the  object  of 
emotion,  or  has  deflected  the  soul  to  seek  its  spiritual  suste- 
nance beyond  science  in  the  world  of  the  unknown.  We 
have  now  to  consider  the  entrance  of  science  itself  into  the 
realm  of  human  life.  In  short,  having  considered  science  as 
a  moral  and  religious  object,  we  have  now  to  consider  morals 
and  religion'  in  so  far  as  these  have  been  objects  for  science. 

I.    THE   SCIENTIFIC   METHOD   IN   MORALS   AND   RELIGION 

There  is  something  characteristically  modern  in  this  very 
idea.  Although  science,  with  some  show  of  modesty,  con- 
fines itself  within  the  bounds  of  experience,  it  does  not  hesi- 
tate to  insist  on  the  letter  of  its  bond  within  these  limits.  It 
is  not  to  be  kept  out  of  any  region  of  experience,  however 
venerated,  so  long  as  it  is  a  region  of  experience.  Now 
morals  and  religion  undeniably  are  experienced;  they  afford 
data,  which  the  scientist  can  observe  and  describe.  Hence, 
in  our  day,  the  science  of  morals  and  the  science  of  religion. 

I.  Empiricism  and  Experimentalism  in  Ethics.  There 
are  two  varietiesof^thics  which  are  cherished_by  common 
sense  and  tradition,"  but'which  clearly  will  be  unacceptable 
to  science.  The  first  of  these  is  that  rationalistic  or  intuitive 
ethics  which  appeals  to  self-evident  first-principles.  ^  Science, 
here  as  elsewhere,  will  look  to  experience,  and  will  insist  that 
''right"  and  "wrong"  shall  prove  themselves  as  tried  out  in 
human  life.  Science  will  adopt  the  tone  of  Byron,  when  he 
said:  "...  I  begin  to  find  out  that  nothing  but  virtue  will 
do  in  this  damned  world.  I  am  tolerably  sick  of  vice,  which 
I  have  tried  in  its  agreeable  varieties."  ^    In  the  second  place 

1  Letter  to  Francis  Hodgson,  May  5,  1810. 

63 


64 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


science  will  reject  all  forms  of  religious  and  metaphysical 
ethics  which  appeal  to  the  will  of  a  supernatural  Being  for 
the  sanction  of  conduct.  Right  and  wrong  must  be  defined 
in  terms  of  their  consequences  within  the  limits  of  human 
Hfe.  In  short,  the  new  scientific  ethics  will  be  empirical  and 
experimental. 

It  follows  that  the  influence  of  science  will  be  favorable  to 
that  type  of  ethics  which  is  known  to  philosophers  as  ^'he- 
donism "  or  "utilitarianism.''  The  reason  for  this  alliance 
is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  science  insists  upon  appealing 
to  immediate  data  for  the  verification  of  its  theories.  In  the 
physical  sciences  these  data  are  provided  by  sensation;  while 
in  the  moral  sciences  they  are  provided  by  the  felt  satisfac- 
tions. The  effect  of  science,  as  we  shall  see,  has  been  to 
modify  the  traditional  utilitarianism  in  very  important  re- 
spects. But  the  fundamental  thesis  is  accepted:  the  thesis, 
namely,  that  the  particular  pleasures  and  pains  of  particular 
men,  their  desires  and  aversions,  their  fears  andTiopes,  are 
the  basal  facts  of  value,  which  afford  the  only  sure  means  of 
controlling  and  checking  the  theorizings  of  moral  philosophy. 
Right  and  wrong,  then,  in  a  scientific  ethics  will  have  to  do 
not  with  absolute  imperatives  or  august"authorities,  but  with 
human  policies  and  human  satisfactions. 

2.  Modifications  of  Utilitarianism.  While  the  influence 
of  science  has  been  such  as  to  confirm  the  empirical  and 
experimental  b^is  of  ,  utilitarianism,  a  more  enlightened 
psychology  has  discredited  the  former  view  that  man  is  a 
mechanism  that  can  be  moved  only  by  the  expectation  of 
pleasure  or  the  fear  of  pain.  In  place  of  the  view  that  the 
main-spring  of  action  is  a  calculation  of  future  feelings,  there 
has  appeared  a  new  view  that  man  is  a  bundle  of  miscellane- 
ous impulses,  such  as  the  sex  impulse,  the  appetites,  and  the 
instincts  of  pugnacity  and  maternity.  The  proof  of  right y  \^ 
action,  in  this  new  utilitarianism,  is  not  the  state  of  pleasure/ 
but  the  satisfaction  or  fulfilment  of  these  impulses.  / 

For  the  older  utilitarianisnr  the  central  and  insoluble  prob- 
lem was  to  r^cg^die  sociajly  useful  action  IWith  the  indi- 
vidual's supposSmdifference  to  everylhing  but  his  private 


THE  SCIENCE  OF   MAN 


^S 


pleasures  and  pains;  the  new  view  recognizes  among  man's 
original  impulses  at  least  one  other-regarding  impulse,  such 
as  the  parental  instinct  or  the  ''tender  emotion."  In  other 
words,  instead  of  being  naturally  egoistic  and  only  arti- 
ficially social,  man  is  now  regarded  as  naturally  social. 
Thus  as  the  older  utilitarianism  was  individualistic,  the  new 
utilitarianism  is  associated  with  the  rising  tide  of  socialism, 
with  the  new  sense  of  the  interdependence  or  "solidarity  " 
of  mankind,  and  with  the  more  advanced  forms  of  democracy. 

But  even  with  these  changes  utilitarianism  retains  the 
same  fundamental  view  of  institutions  that  distinguished 
the  thought  of  its  founders,  Bentham  and  Mill.  On  the  day 
after  the  entrance  of  Bulgaria  into  the  war,  the  British 
Government  served  notice  that  "The  military  authorities 
will  not  hold  themselves  responsible  for  the  issue  of  the  war 
if  the  country  does  not  provide  them  with  another  million 
men."i  Xn  other  words,  the  government  of  Great  Britain 
acknowledges  itself  to  be  a  sort  of  directorate,  holding  its 
power  in  trust,  and  appealing  in  the  end  to  the  interest  and 
judgment  of  the  people.  Utilitarianism  still  adheres  to  an 
individual  rather  than  a  corporate  theory  of  value;  measuring 
and  testing  institutiDnal  policies  by  their  distributive  effect 
upon  the  well-being  of  men  and  women,  rather  than  by  their 
unified  effect  upon  the  greatness  and  glory  of  the  nation. 
Utilitarianism  in  this  sense  still  remains  one  of  the  chief  dis- 
tinguishing marks  of  moral  and  political  thought  in  English- 
speaking  countries.^ 

3.  Comparative  Ethics.  Such  scientific  ethics  as  I  have 
thus  far  described  would  study  the  effects  of  action  on  human 
interests,  and  endeavor  to  define  such  forms  of  action  as  will 
conduce  to  the  harmonious  and  fruitful  fulfilment  of  in- 
terests. But  some  exponents  of  the  scientific  method  have 
insisted  that  such  an  inquiry,  although  it  may  contribute  to 
the  art  of  life,  can  never  result  in  the  development  of  a  science. 
A  science,  it  is  said,  cannot  deal  with  what  ought  to  he,  but 
only  with  what  is.     It  must  deal  with  facts  and  confine  its 

1  Chevrillon,  England  and  the  War,  p.  217. 

2  Cf.  below,  pp.  491-496. 


66 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


efforts  to  describing  them.  Are  there,  then,  any  describable 
moral  facts?  According  to  the  Frenchman  Levy-Bruhl  such 
facts  are  to  be  found  in  the  actual  approbations  and  disap- 
probations of  mankind,  as  these  have  been  felt  and  expressed 
by  different  communities  at  different  places  and  at  different 
times.  The  moral  facts  are  the  forms  and  utterances  of  the 
historical  conscience  of  mankind.  The  truly  scientific  ethics 
will  then  deal  with  these  facts.  -  ''It  consists  in  considering 
the  moral  rules,  obligations,  rights,  and  in  general  the  con- 
tent of  the  moral  conscience,  as  a  given  reality,  as  an  en- 
semble of  facts.'*  ^  Scientific  ethics  will  x:ompile  and  compare 
these  facts,  study  their  genesis,  their  psych^gical  and  othir 
causes,  and  trace  their  development  through  the  course  Af 
human  evolution.  I 

This  type  of  ethics  results  either  in^moral  scepticism  or  in 
an  appeal  to  some  more  fundamental  principle.  Taken  as 
it  stands  it  seems  to  imply  that  nothing's  right  or  wrong  but 
thinking  makes  it  so;  that  right  and  wrong,  in  other  words, 
are  relative  to  the  opinions  of  an  age,  society  or  even  in- 
dividual, and  have  no  objectivity  that  can  be  argued  and 
proved.  Indeed,  Westermarck  expressly  avows  this  view. 
But  more  commonly  ethical  considerations  of  another  type 
are  introduced  to  supplement  these  purely  descriptive  re- 
sults. Such  ulterior  considerations  are  introduced  through 
the  asking  of  one  or  both  of  two  questions.  First,  one  may 
ask,  ''Are  these  particular  moral  judgments  of  mankind 
true?''  Was  the  Spartan  approval  of  mendacity,  for  ex- 
ample, well-advised?  In  answering~\he  question  one  as- 
sumes that  it  means,  "Is  mendacity,  in  fact,  good  for  man- 
kind ?  "  —  and  one  looks  to  its  effects  to  see.  Second,  one 
may  ask,  "Are  these  particular  moral  judgments  useful  to  the 
community  that  forms  them?''  "Does  the  possession  of 
such  a  conscience  strengthen  a  society  in  the  struggle  for 
existence  ?  "  The  former  of  these  questions  leads  to  an  em- 
pirical and  experimental  utilitarianism  of  the  type  described 

*  La  Morale  et  la  Science  des  Moeurs,  p.  14.  For  a  similar  conception  of 
ethics  cf .  Westermarck,  Origin  and  Development  oj  Moral  Ideas,  and  Hobhouse, 
Morals  in  Evolution. 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  MAN 


67 


above;  the  second  leads  to  the  new  Darwinian  ethics  that  I 
propose  to  consider  later.^ 

4.  The  Science  of  Religion.  It  is  not  wholly  absurd  to 
deny  the  existence  of  God,  but  it  would  be  wholly  absurd  to 
deny  that  men  have  believed  in  God.  The  former,  or  the 
debatable  thing,  is  the  object  of  religion;  the  latter,  which  is 
the  indubitable  fact,  is  religion  itself.  Though  you  con- 
demn a  man's  religion  as  superstition,  you  do  not  prove  him 
any  the  less  religious;  though  you  regard  it  as  a  primitive  or 
even  a  pathological  fact,  it  remains  none  the  less  a  fact. 
And  it  is  the  business  of  science  to  describe  facts  wherever 
they  are  to  be  found.  When  the  fact  is  a  belief  it  may  be 
described  quite  without  prejudice  to  the  question  of  its 
truth  or  error.^  In  this  sense  religion  falls  within  the  prov- 
ince of  science.  It  is  the  task  of  the  science  of  religion  to 
view  religion  as  an  incident  in  human  history  and  a  mani- 
festation of  human  nature. 

The  older  branch  of  the  science  of  religion  is  that  which 
deals  with  religion  as  an  incident  in  human  history.  The 
interest  here  has  been  mainly  in  the  questions  of  genesis  and 
of  comparative  types.  How  did  religion  in  the  generic  sense 
arise,  and  what  are  its  leading  species?  This  evolutionary 
interest  has  led  to  a  special  emphasis  on  primitive  religions, 
as  presumably  exhibiting  the  nature  of  religion  most  simply; 
whereas  the  older  philosophical  interest  had  led  men  to  look 
for  the  meaning  of  religion  in  its  completer,  and  in  what  the 
particular  philosopher  took  to  be  its  truer,  forms.  The  study 
of  primitive  religions  has  been  carried  on  as  a  part  of  the 
general  study  of  primitive  customs  and  folk-lore;  the  com- 
parative study  of  religions,  as  a  part  of  the  general  study  of 
racial  traits.  Such  studies  have  necessarily  dealt  almost 
exclusively  with  the  externals  of  religion,  with  ritual,  myth 

and  art. 

To  this  anthropological  and  ethnological  form  of  the 
science  of  religion  there  has  been  added  more  recently  the 
psychology  of  religion.  This  is  the  turn  of  inquiry  that  is 
most  characteristic  of  the  day.     There  are  several  methods. 

1  Cf.  below,  pp.  I32-I49' 


68 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


William  James's  epoch-making  Varieties  of  Religious  Ex- 
perience was  based  mainly  on  the  study  of  the  intimate  per- 
sonal writings  of  great  Christian  devotees,  such  as  St. 
Augustine  and  Luther.  Professor  E.  D.  Starbuck  and 
Professor  J.  H.  Leuba  have  made  use  of  the  questionnaire  and 
the  statistical  method.  More  recently  the  psychiatrists  and 
pathologists  have  applied  clinical  methods  to  the  excesses 
and  abnormaUties  of  religion.  In  all  of  these  studies  in- 
terest has  centered  in  the  rehgious  crisis,  in  the  conversion 
of  the  ''twice-born,''  and  in  mystical  rapture,  because  in 
these  extreme  forms  of  the  religious  experience  its  peculiari- 
ties will  presumably  be  most  clearly  marked. 

Now  there  are  two  different  and  opposite  effects  that 
studies  such  as  these  may  have  upon  the  believer  himself. 
On  the  one  hand  the  reduction  of  one's  own  reUgion  to  a  mere 
species  of  a  genus  that  includes  what  one  is  accustomed  to 
regard  as  idolatry  and  superstition  may  seem   to  degrade 
one's  own  religion.     Having  lost  its  uniqueness  it  loses  its 
hold.     One's  miracles  now  appear  as  only  a  variety  of  magic, 
one's  faith  as  a  variety  of  superstition,  one's  sacraments  and 
feast  days  as  survivals  of  old  cults,  one's  revelations  as  myths, 
and  one's  founders  and  saints  as  "psychics."     So  far  the 
effect  of  the  science  of  religion  is  to  undermine  religious  be- 
lief.    But,  on  the  other  hand,  one  may  feel  that  one's  rehgion 
is  confirmed  by  the  proof  of  its  universaHty.     To  be  so 
affected  requires  that  one's  religion  shall  be  broadened  and 
liberalized.     The  intolerant  worship  of  a  jealous  God  is  only 
discredited  by  the  promiscuous  interest  in  all  reUgions.     But 
if  one  thinks  the  religious  spirit,  the  religious  emotion,  or  the 
attitude  of  faith  to  be  the  important  thing,  one  will  rejoice 
that  these  are  so  universal  and  that  they  are  able  to  manifest 
themselves  in  so  great  a  variety  of  dogmas,  symbols  and 

outward  forms. 

The  science  of  religion  has  emphasized  the  universality  of 
religion.     And  this  universality  in  itself  suggests  that  religimr- 
must  have  some  necessary  and  abiding  value.     It  may  be 
argued  that  what  is  so  universal  must  be  true;  or  that  it  must 
be  grounded  in  human  nature;  or  that  it  is  useful;  or  that  it 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  MAN 


69 


proves  the  spiritual  descent  and  destiny  of  man.  With  all 
of  these  reinforcements  of  religious  behef  by  the  scientific 
study  of  religious  facts  we  shall  meet  in  the  chapters  to  come. 


II.    PSYCHOLOGISM 

So  much  for  the  direct  applications  of  scientific  method  to 
the  content  of  the  moral  and  religious  Hfe.  We  have  next 
to  consider  the  indirect  bearing  of  scientific  method  on 
morals  and  religion,  through  its  application  to  man.  Man, 
as  we  have  seen,  was  the  last  and  in  its  own  judgment  the 
decisive  conquest  of  science.  With  man,  his  ideals  and  his 
institutions  submitted  to  the  scientific  method,  and  incor- 
porated into  nature,  there  would  now  be  no  remnant  left  of 
the  spiritual  philosophy  that  had  once  ruled  human  belief. 
Hence  we  find  science  especially  active  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  in  carrying  the  war  into  this,  the  enemy's  last 
stronghold.  There  have  been  three  sciences  that  have  de- 
voted themselves  to  man:  psychology,  which  has  considered 
him  as  an  individual  mind;  biology,  which  has  considered 
him  as  an  organism;  and  sociology,  which  has  considered  him 
as  a  group,  obeying  psychological  and  biological  laws,  but 
with  a  peculiar  and  more  complex  nature  of  its  own.  The 
sociological  and  biological  studies  of  man  are  to  supply  the 
content  of  several  chapters  to  come,  on  *'The  Discovery  of 
Society,"  and  on  "Evolution."  I  wish  here  to  dispose 
briefly  of  the  psychology  of  man  in  so  far  as  this  has  given 
rise  to  a  change  in  moral  and  religious  values. 

I.  The  Mechanism  of  the  Mind.  I  am  speaking  here  not 
of  psychology  in  general,  but  of  that  modern  psychology 
which  ranges  itself  under  the  banner  of  natural  science,  and 
submits  the  human  mind  to  the  descriptive  and  experimental 
method.  In  such  a  view  of  the  matter  the  soul  in  the  old 
sense  utterly  disappears.  I  am  assuming  that  the  term 
"soul  "  suggests  an  indivisible,  substantive  and  imperishable 
entity,  that  acts  freely,  possesses  its  states  as  only  its  passing 
modes,  and  propels  a  body  which  it  only  temporarily  in- 
habits.    In  place  of  this,  scientific  psychology  provides  only 


70 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  manifold  of  the  states  themselves,  with  all  their  variety 
and  transiency,  and  in  close  dependence  on  the  states  of  the 
central  nervous  system.  The  self,  instead  of  being  a  sub- 
stance, is  a  '* stream."  Instead  of  being  a  source  of  power, 
it  is  a  theatre  where  forces  enter  from  abroad,  meet,  and  pass 

beyond. 

In  so  far  as  this  has  a  purely  negative  bearing  on  religious 
conceptions,  such,  for  example,  as  immortaUty,  I  shall  not 
pursue  it  further.  It  has  found  positive  expression  in  the 
interest  in  the  psychical  mechanism  of  man.  This  interest 
in  the  psychological  causes  of  action  is  illustrated  in  Strind- 
berg's  powerful  play  Miss  Julia,  which  the  author  calls 
*^A  Naturalistic  Tragedy.''  This  girl's  fall  and  tragic  end 
are  ascribed  to  heredity,  education,  temperament,  physical 
condition,  social  and  physical  environment  and  to  the 
fatality  of  chance.  It  is  the  author's  contention  that  con- 
duct is  the  expression  not  of  a  fixed  ''character  "  in  the  sense 
of  the  older  dramatist,  nor  of  a  superior  destiny,  but  of  the 
interplay  of  many  causes.  Hapless  mankind  is  doomed,  not 
by  the  order  of  events,  but  rather  by  their  caprice.  In  this 
view  the  notions  of  man  as  a  responsible  and  guilty  creature 
tend  to  disappear.  ''The  naturahst  has  wiped  out  the  idea 
of  guilt,  but  he  cannot  wipe  out  the  results  of  an  action  — 
punishment,  prison,  or  fear  —  and  for  the  simple  reason  that 
they  remain  without  regard  to  his  verdict."^  In  explaining 
his  subordination  of  the  more  personal  aspect  of  his  charac- 
ters in  Miss  Julia,  Strindberg  says: 

"I  have  done  this  because  I  believe  I  have  noticed  that  the 
psychological  processes  are  what  interest  the  people  of  our  day 
more  than  anything  else.  Our  souls,  so  eager  for  knowledge, 
cannot  rest  satisfied  with  seeing  what  happens,  but  must  also  learn 
how  it  comes  to  happen!  What  we  want  to  see  are  just  the  wires, 
the  machinery.  We  want  to  investigate  the  box  with  the  false 
bottom,  touch  the  magic  ring  in  order  to  find  the  suture,  and  look 
into  the  cards  to  discover  how  they  are  marked."  ^ 


»  Author's  Preface,  Plays,  trans,  by  Edwin  Bjorkman,  Vol.  II,  p.  102. 
*  Op.  cit.,  p.  106. 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  MAN 


71 


This  interest  in  the  psychology  or  even  the  physiology  of 
Ufe  is  united  with  the  moral  interest  in  the  so-called  "  problem 
play  "  of  Ibsen,  Brieux,  Shaw,  Zangwill,  Hauptmann  and 
Bernstein.  There  is  no  longer  an  indivisible  soul  that  fol- 
lows its  appointed  destiny,  or  a  "character  "  which  plays  its 
stereotyped  and  self-consistent  r61e;  there  are  only  elemen- 
tary passions  and  motives,  diseases  and  nerves,  tempera- 
ments and  hereditary  traits,  which  conflict  and  combine 
with  one  another  and  with  the  forces  of  the  environment. 

While  the  new  psychology  has  modified  the  aesthetic  in- 
terest in  human  nature,  it  has  even  more  profoundly  modi- 
fied all  the  arts  which  have  to  do  with  the  use  and  naoulding 
of  human  nature.    The  practical  importance  of  this  is  in- 
calculable  and   is   rapidly  increasing.     Knowledge   means 
control,  whether  of  physical  forces  or  of  man  himself.     And 
in  the  building  of  the  social  order  it  is  more  important  to  1/ 
control  love  and  hate  than  electricity  or  chemical  energy.  \ 
But  since  we  are  here  concerAcd  with  the  ultimate  ends  of 
life  rather  than  ^ith  its  instruments  and  agencies  a  bare 
mention  of  appUed  psychology,  or  moral  technology  must 
suffice.    We  find  it  in  economics,  ih  the  study  of  the  relation 
of  fatigue  tathe  efficient  oflabor .    We  find  it  in  education , 
intellectual,  morafand  religious;  in  criminology  and  penal- 
ogy ;  in  medicine,  and  in  every  other  work  of  human  ameliora- 
tion.    It  is  one  of  the  influences  that  has  made  philanthropy 
less  sentimental  and  spontaneous,  but  at  the  same  time  more 
systematic,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  more  efficient.     FinaUy,  we 
find  it  in  politics  and  in  propaganda  as  furnishing  the  basis 
of  the  new  art  of  publicity.    If  the  spread  of  the  new  mech-    p, 
anistic  psychology  confirms  the  fatalist  in  the  view  that 
man  is  the  creature  of  natural  iorces,  and  confirms  the  cynic 
in  the  view  that  mankind  can^^e  "worked,'^  it  even  more 
powerfully  confirms  the  Jfiuiimne)in  the  faith  that  mankind 

can  be  saved. 

2.  The  Cult  of  Sensibility.  So  far  modern  psychology  is 
morally  negative,  or  merely  instrumental.  But  there  is  Hke- 
wise  a  purpose  or  goal  of  life  which  may  be  traced  to  the  in- 
fluence of  the  psychological  method  of  introspection.    This 


72 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


procedure  is  more  a  point  of  view  than  a  method.  You  can 
if  you  will,  watch  experience  in  the  pecuHar  patterns  which  it 
forms  within  the  confines  of  your  individual  mind.  Your 
thoughts  may  be  worth  a  penny,  or  more;  but  in  any  case 
they  are  there  for  you  to  gather.  Psychology  has  sought 
to  make  an  exhaustive  study  of  these  introspective  appear- 
ances; of  all  the  different  kinds  of  thoughts  and  all  the  dif- 
ferent combinations  of  thoughts  that  skilfully  self-conscious 
people  have  been  able  to  distinguish. 

Though  by  no  means  wholly  responsible  for  it,  this  psy- 
chological emphasis  has  certainly  reinforced  the  tendency  of 
moralists  and  litterateurs  to  make  much  of  the  inward  pano- 
rama and  shifting  scenes  of  their  own  consciousness.  We 
find  this  in  Byron.  ^'The  great  object  of  Hfe,"  he  says,  ''is 
sensation  —  to  feel  that  we  exist,  even  though  in  pain.  It 
is  this  '  craving  void  '  which  drives  us  to  gaming  —  to 
battle  —  to  travel  —  to  intemperate,  but  keenly  felt  pur- 
suits of  any  description,  whose  principal  attraction  is  the 
agitation  inseparable  from  their  accomplishment."^  And  so 
with  Walter  Pater  and  his  ''New  Cyrenaicism" ;  or  the  less 
discriminating  Barres,  the  psychologue,  the  "dandy  of 
psychology."  These  men,  as  a  recent  critic  has  remarked, 
engage  in  spiritual  exercises  not  unlike  those  of  the  old 
Christian  ascetics,  save  that  whereas  St.  Anthony  sought 
to  put  certain  feelings  out  of  his  mind,  these  men  seek  to  put 
certain  feeUngs  in.^ 

Psychologism  as  a  cult  has  its  own  characteristic  excesses, 
and  it  is  by  these  that  it  is  best  known.  It  is  one  of  the  chief 
motives  of  that  "decadence"  to  which  I  have  already  re- 
ferred and  which  I  have  attributed  to  the  spirit  of  revolt 
against  fixed  standards  of  morality  and  taste.  These  two 
motives,  the  phobia  for  anything  established  or  respectable 
and  the  craving  for"  experience,"  work  easily  together  and 
tend  to  the  same  results  in  conduct.  For  if  you  live  for  ex- 
periences, you  must  forever  be  seeking  new  ones.  The  old 
experiences  soon  lose  their  flavor  as  the  palate  becomes 

1  Letter  to  Mis^  Milbanke,  Sept.  6,  1813. 
*  Cf.  Huneker:  Egoists,  pp.  214,  219. 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  MAN 


73 


accustomed  to  them.  And  the  richer,  more  highly  seasoned, 
the  experiences,  the  more  rapidly  do  they  deaden  the  powers 
of  taste.  But  novelty  is  most  readily  found  in  those  for- 
bidden regions  which  have  been  closed  by  the  habits,  con- 
ventions and  standards  of  society.  Hence  the  French  poet 
Baudelaire,  who  deUberately  cultivated  a  morbid  sensibility, 
who  said,  "Evil  be  thou  my  good."  Hence  the  school  of 
Poe  and  De  Quincy,  with  its  reUsh  for  the  horrible  and  the 
occult.  The  psychologues  go  to  prison,  or  go  mad,  or  even 
get  religion,  in  order  to  find  new  pastures  where  their  jaded 
sensibilities  may  still  be  quickened.  When  new  things  are 
exhausted,  old  and  forgotten  things  must  be  revived.  Hence 
the  return  to  MediaevaHsm  and  Romanism  by  litterateurs 
such  as  Huysmans,  Bourget  and  Barres,  and  the  cult  of  the 
primitive  and  savage  among  post-impressionist  painters. 
This  pursuit  of  the  novel  experience,  of  the  bizarre,  the  im-  / 
proper,  the  disgusting,  the  obsolete,  the  abnormal,  —  ends  / 
invariably  with  pessimism,  Hfe  outlasting  the  appetite  for  life.^ 
The  psychologue  ends,  if  not  with  despair,  then  with  hope- 
less ennui,  like  that  of  Stendhal  who,  having  witnessed  the 
battles  of  Jena  and  Wagram,  is  said  to  have  asked  during  a 
day  of  fierce  fighting,  "  Is  that  all?"  ^ 

There  is  another  evil  in  this  psychologism,  that  is  niore 
serious.  I  refer  to  the  inversion  of  values,  that  "  ego-mania," 
to  use  Nordau's  term,  which  judges  the  worid  from  the  angle 
of  one's  private  sensibilities.  George  Moore,  in  his  Con- 
fessions of  a  Young  Man,  affords  a  striking  example  of  this. 
From  Walter  Pater,  Moore  learned  the  wholesome  lesson  that 
if  one  has  only  a  good  appetite  one  can  enjoy  the  home- 
cooking  of  everyday  hfe. 

"I  had  not  thought  of  the  simple  and  unaffected  joy  of  the  heart 
of  natural  things;  the  color  of  the  open  air,  the  many  forms  of  the 
country,  the  birds  flying,  — that  one  making  for  the  sea;  the 
abandoned  boat,  the  dwarf  roses  and  the  wild  lavender;  nor  had  I 
thought  of  the  beauty  of  the  mildness  in  life,  and  how  by  a  certain 
avoidance  of  the  wilfully  passionate,  and  the  surely  ugly  one  may 
rescue  an  aspect  of  temporal  life  which  is  abiding  and  soul-sufficing."  ^ 

1  Quoted  by  Huneker,  Egoists,  p.  23.  ^  P.  212. 


74 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


\ 


But  the  real  motive  of  this  philosophy  is  betrayed  by 
Moore  elsewhere  in  the  same  book: 

"Every  immortal  deed  was  an  act  of  fearful  injustice;  the  world 
of  grandeur,  of  triumph,  of  courage,  of  lofty  aspirations,  was  built 
up  on  injustice.  HaU,  therefore,  to  the  thrice  glorious  virtue 
injustice'  What  care  I  that  some  millions  of  wretched  Israehtes 
died  under  Pharaoh's  lash  or  Egypt^s  sun?  It  was  well  that  they 
died  that  I  might  have  the  pyramids  to  look  on,  or  to  fill  a  musmg 
hour  with  wonderment.  Is  there  one  amongst  us  who  would 
exchange  them  for  the  lives  of  the  ignominious  slaves  that  diedi' 

According  to  these  philosophers  it^s  *^  sugar  and  spice  and 
everything  nice,  that^s  what  the  world  is  made  of/'     The 
causes  of  nature  and  history  are  so  many  confectioners  that 
compound  sweets  for  Mr.  Moore  and  those  Uke  him.     If  the 
taste  is  bitter  or  if  the  sweetness  palls,  if  there  is  an  un- 
pleasant dish  of  "snaps  and  snails  and  puppy-dogs  tails, 
then  the  feasters  complain,  make  up  faces,  burst  out  crying, 
or  refuse  to  play.     I  have  said  that  this  inversion  of  values, 
this  mistaking  of  one's  own  palate  for  the  theatre  of  history 
and  the  barometer  of  universal  destiny,  was  a  serious  evil. 
But  it  is  prevented  from  corrupting  the  bulk  of  mankind, 
through  being  ridiculous/  Those  who  count  themselves  an 
aristocracy  of  rare  soul<  will  always  appear  to  the  man  on 
the  street  as  a  few  spoiled  children  who  have  eaten  so  much 
candy  as  to  destroy  their  appetite  for  the  staple  and  whole- 
some things  of  life. 


/ 


^  P.  145. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  DISCOVERY   OF   SOCIETY 

In  order  to  understand  the  sense  in  which  society  may  be 
said  to  have  been  discovered  in  our  day,  it  is  necessary  to 
distinguish  three  different  motives  which  have  led  men  to 
conceive  of  society.  The  first  of  these  is  the  moral-religious 
motive.  By  this  men  have  been  led  to  conceive  of  society 
as  the  ideal  form  of  life.  This  is  the  commonest  notion  of 
society  in  European  thought,  both  Pagan  and  Christian. 
Plato  and  Aristotle  believed  that  man  could  be  perfected 
only  in  a  political  community  permitting  of  varied  and 
orderly  relations  in  which  he  might  exercise  his  powers.  The 
Stoics  and  Epicureans  thought  of  society  as  a  fellowship  of 
the  virtuous,  the  congenial  association  of  the  emancipated. 
The  distinctively  Christian  virtues,  compassion,  love, 
humility  and  service,  were  socializing  virtues.  They  implied 
that  in  proportion  as  a  man  became  Christianized  he  became 
alive  to  the  existence  and  the  interests  of  other  men.  ^  To  be 
a  Christian  meant,  moreover,  to  identify  oneself  with  the 
whole  race  of  mankind,  a  race  solidified  by  the  inheritance 
of  a  common  taint  and  by  the  promise  of  a  common  salvation. 
In  all  these  conceptions  there  is  undoubtedly  some  recog- 
nition of  society  as  a  natural  fact.  But  if  so  it  is  as  a  rule 
incidental  and  implicit.  And  more  commonly  man  is 
thought  of  as  naturally  selfish  and  as  requiring  some  induce- 
ment or  a  change  of  heart  before  entering  into  the  society  in 

question. 

The  second  motive  may  be  called  the  logical  or  meta- 
physical motive.  It  is  asserted,  to  start  with,  that  the 
whole  is  more  real  than  its  parts.  From  this  some  philos- 
ophers have  argued  that  the  individual  cannot  be  real,  be- 
cause he  is  particular  and  incomplete.  The  institution,  or 
the  group,  though  it  in  turn  is  also  incomplete,  is,  according 

75 


76 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


( 

to  this  reasoning,  nevertheless  more  real  than  its  component 
individuals,  and  is  the  highest  form  of  human  reality. 

The  third  is  the  motive  with  which  we  are  here  primarily 
concerned.  Let  us  call  it  the  biological  or  psychological 
motive,  or  the  motive  of  natural  science.  Whereas  the 
moralist  contends  that  man  ought  to  be  social,  and  the  meta- 
physician that  he  logically  must,  the  scientist  remarks  simply 
that  as  a  matter  of  fact  he  is.  This  is  the  sense  in  which 
society  has  in  our  day  been  discovered. 

There  are  three  of  these  social  matters  of  fact  which  have 
been  brought  to  light  in  modern  times  and  which  afford  the 
starting  point  for  the  science  of  sociology.  There  is  the 
social  interest  within  the  individual,  or  the  natural  interest 
of  one  individual  in  others  of  the  species.  There  are  the 
social  forces,  the  pecuHar  agencies  that  emanate  from  the 
group  and  mould  or  control  the  individual.  Finally,  there 
is  society  as  a  distinct  entity,  having  its  own  structure  and 
function  at  once  more  primitive  and  more  authoritative  than 
those  of  the  individual. 

I.    THE   SOCIAL  INTEREST   OF   THE   INDIVIDUAL 

Hobbes,  who  was  the  founder  of  the  British  ethical  move- 
ment in  the  sense  that  those  who  came  after  him  sought  to 
answer  and  refute  him,  regarded  the  natural  man  as  a  self- 
seeking  automaton.  The  state  of  nature  in  which  men  are 
left  free  to  act  as  their  self-seeking  prompts  them  is,  according 
to  Hobbes,  a  state  of  war.  To  escape  this  mean  and  brutish 
condition,  men  find  it  necessary  to  erect  a  sovereign  power 
that  can  enforce  peace  by  intimidation.  But  from  an  early 
date  Hobbes's  view  was  felt  to  be  a  libel  against  human 
nature.  His  challenge  was  taken  up  by  Cumberland;  by 
Shaftesbury,  who  proclaimed  the  *^ natural  affections,"  "such 
as  are  founded  in  love,  complacency,  good  will,  sympathy 
with  the  kind  ";  by  Bishop  Butler;  by  Hume,  with  his  .recog- 
nition of  sympathy  or  *' fellow-feeling";  by  Adam  Smitli;  by 
John  Stuart  Mill,  who  spoke  of  man's  "feeling  of  unity  with 
his  fellow-creatures";   and  by   Auguste   Comte,  with   his 


THE   DISCOVERY  OF   SOCIETY 


77 


theory  of  "social  affections."  This  more  favorable  view  of 
human  nature  has  come  gradually  to  prevail.  Though  at 
first  it  was  largely  dictated  by  sentimental  and  ethical  con- 
siderations, it  is  now  recognized  as  a  plain  matter  of  psycho- 
logical fact. 

The  social  view  of  man's  original  impulses  has  been  rein- 
forced by  another  change  of  psychological  opinion.  The 
utilitarianism  of  Bentham  and  his  followers  was  founded  on 
the  more  or  less  unconscious  assumption  that  human  con- 
duct is  governed  by  a  single  motive.  So  long  as  this  view 
prevailed  the  selfish  theory  was  bound  to  possess  great  plausi- 
bility. Selfish  pleasure  appears  to  be  a  more  constant  and 
a  more  powerful  motive  than  altruism,  and  if  there  must  be 
one  main-spring  of  action,  this  would  therefore  have  the 
strongest  claim  to  acceptance.  Thus  there  arose  the  view, 
so  widely  held  a  generation  ago,  that  unselfish  action  is  only 
a  refined  and  calculated  form  of  selfishness.  It  was  believed 
that  before  a  man  could  be  moved  to  perform  an  unselfish  act 
he  must  be  led  to  expect  some  private  gain  for  himself;  this 
expectation  providing  the  incentive  or  inducement  without 
which  no  active  energy  would  be  generated.  But  once  the 
theory  of  a  central  main-spring  was  abandoned,  this  inter- 
pretation of  such  behavior  as  mother-love  appeared  intoler- 
ably forced  and  grotesque.  Once  grant  that  nature  supplies 
man  with  many  motives  capable  of  operating  quite  inde- 
pendently, there  is  then  no  reason  for  denying  what  seems 
to  be  the  plain  fact  that  men  do  sometimes  act  from  an  in- 
terest in  others,  with  no  thought  whatever  of  the  conse- 
quences for  self. 

So  the  monistic  psychology  of  self-seeking  was  superseded 
a  generation  ago  by  the  pluralistic  psychology  of  instinct. 
Mother-love,  the  parental  instincts,  "the  tender  emotions  " 
and  "  gregariousness  "  are  now  generally  accepted  as  original 
impulses  that  require  no  more  ultimate  psychological  ex- 
planation, and  that  find  their  biological  explanation  in  the 
good  of  the  species  ratlier  than  of  the  individual. 

Let  us  consider  the  ethical  implications  of  this  view.  It 
establishes  altruism  on  a  new  basis.     This  better  form  of 


78 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


conduct  need  no  longer  be  referred  to  a  supernatural  prin- 
ciple, such  as  duty,  conscience  or  reason,  —  a  principle  that 
supervenes  upon  the  natural  impulses  and  constrains  them 
against  their  original  bent.  Altruism  is  no  longer  unnatural 
and  artificial.  Furthermore  it  is  no  longer  necessary  to 
think  of  altruism  as  instrumental,  as  a  higher  prudence  by 
which  man  escapes  penalties  imposed  by  God,  or  by  the  state, 
or  by  public  opinion.  The  new  altruism  is  not  an  altruism 
of  discipline  or  of  pressure,  but  an  altruism  of  education. 
Thus  Comte,  Mill  and  Spencer  teach  that  the  better  life  has 
its  own  roots  in  nature.  What  is  needed  is  only  that  the 
social  impulses  should  be  cultivated  and  developed  until 
they  shall  have  acquired  such  ascendancy  over  the  individual 
as  shall  fit  him  for  a  humane  and  co-operative  social  life.  It 
is  this  altruism  with  its  insistence  on  the  native  sociality  and 
perfectibiHty  of  human  nature  that  has  provided  the  main 
ethical  basis  for  modern  democracy  and  social  reform. 


II.    SOCIAL  FORCES 

But  the  emphasis  on  the  social  aspect  of  human  life  has 
threatened  to  overwhelm  the  individual  altogether.  It  has 
been  argued  that  the  more  powerful  forces  which  govern 
history  and  which  mould  the  individual,  are  neither  private 
interests  nor  rational  self-determination,  but  impersonal  and 
irresistible  ^'social  forces.^' 

There  have  been  two  varieties  of  social  force  that  have 
been  recognized  in  modern  times.  There  is  first  what  may 
be  called  the  ^'statistical  "  force,  the  sheer  weight  of  num- 
bers, the  preponderance  of  the  aggregate  over  the  individual. 
It  is  a  mistake,  according  to  this  view,  to  write  history  as 
though  its  events  and  epochs  were  the  work  of  great  men. 
The  great  man  is  himself  the  product  of  history.  He  merely 
happens  to  be  there ^  and  to  be  used  by  circumstances  and 
agencies  that  he  neither  makes  nor  controls.  Thus  Mr.  T.  E. 
Cliffe  Leslie  contends  that  it  is  not  this  man  or  that  that 
governs  the  course  of  history,  but  ''the  more  lasting  forces 
of  society  decide."    "Napoleon  I,"  he  continues,  "carried 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIETY 


79 


the  boundaries  of  France  to  the  Elbe,  but  they  are  now  what 
they  would  have  been  had  no  Corsitan  adventurer  ever  found 
his  way  to  Paris.  And  not  the  will  of  Napoleon  III,  but  the 
will  of  France  upon  the  one  hand,  and  of  the  rest  of  Europe 
on  the  other,  and  the  balance  of  European  power,  will  de- 
termine whether  the  French  flag  shall  float  over  Antwerp, 
Coblentz,  Genoa,  and  Alexandria  at  the  end  of  the  present 
century."^ 

While  this  view  is  evidently  justified  as  a  needed  corrective 
of  the  dramatic  and  biographical  type  of  history,  it  is  at  best 
a  loose  and  dangerous  generally tion.  Granting  that  the 
great  man's  opportunity  is  provided  by  a  unique  combina- 
tion of  circumstances,  the  fact  remains  that  the  great  man 
uses  his  opportunity.  He  may  not  lay  the  train,  but  he 
creates  the  spark  which  ignites  it.  Though  he  may  con- 
tribute from  himself  only  a  sUght  increment  of  energy,  the 
way  he  apphes  that  energy  in  a  crisis  may  determine  which 
of  two  widely  different  courses  the  current  of  history  shall 
follow.  It  may  be  argued  that  if  Alexander,  or  Napoleon, 
or  Columbus  had  not  happened  to  do  it,  then  some  one  else 
would.  But  this  is  sheer  dogmatism.  It  only  serves  to 
remind  us  of  the  vast  difference  between  those  cases  in 
which  the  great  man  appears  only  to  be  drawn  by  lot  from 
among  many  who  would  have  "done  as  well,"  and  the  cases 
in  which  the  great  man  is  uniquely  qualified  to  meet  the  sit- 
uation. History  abounds  in  lost  opportunities;  lost  because 
the  necessary  individual  with  the  necessary  genius  to  use  the 
opportunity  was  not  there. 

^  The  second  variety  of  social  force,  a  variety  which  has  been 
discovered  by  the  psychologists  rather  than  the  historians, 
is  the  force  of  "imitation."  The  individual,  according  to 
this  view,  is  for  the  most  part  like  the  group  in  which  he 
lives,  like  in  deed,  in  opinion  and  in  sentiment.  This  is  due 
not  to  any  deliberate  act  of  agreement,  nor  even  of  conscious 
imitation;  but  to  unconscious  imitation,  to  a  process  like 
leavening  or  crystallization,  in  which  what  is  typical  is  diffused 

^  Essays  in  Economic  and  Moral  Philosophy,  pp.  30,  33.    For  James's  dis- 
cussion of  this  question,  cf.  below,  p.  321. 


8o 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


through  the  social  mass.  The  individual  is  assimilated,  or 
contaminated,  by  mere  contact.  This  phenomenon  is  ex- 
hibited most  impressively  by  the  behavior  of  a  crowd,  in 
which  the  individual  is  overpowered  and  swept  away  by  the 
emotion  about  him;  in  which  he  loses  his  individual  traits 
and  his  power  of  individual  judgment,  and  acts,  thinks  and 
teels  **as  one  possessed."  Even  more  important,  though 
less  spectacular,  is  the  phenomenon  of  publicity.  The  in- 
crease in  modern  times  of  facilities  for  communication  has 
enlarged  the  area  of  human  contact.  The  increase  of  literacy 
and  of  means  of  propaganda  has  created  conditions  in  which 
the  individual  is  perpetually  exposed  to  the  power  of  ''sug- 
gestion.'' The  individual  cannot  call  his  mind  his  own;  it  is 
only  a  channel  through  which  flow  the  tides  and  currents  of 
opinion  that  spring  from  all  about  him.  Such  is  the  social 
psychology  of  imitation;  the  psychology  which  was  inaugu- 
rated by  Bagehot  and  developed  more  recently  by  Tarde, 
Le  Bon  and  Baldwin.^ 

This  view  like  the  view  above  would  seem  to  suggest  a  new 
fatahsm,  a  new  sense  of  the  helplessness  of  the  individual 
man.  But  now  that  the  first  enthusiasm  has  declined,  and 
these  new  ideas  can  be  examined  in  a  more  sober  and  critical 
spirit,  it  appears  that  they  enhance  rather  than  disparage  the 
importance  of  the  individual.  Though  it  may  serve  the 
rhetorical  purpose  of  pointing  the  truth,  it  is  a  mistake  to 
regard  imitation  as  a  sort  of  prairie  fire  that  kindles  and  con- 
sumes the  individual.  It  is  a  series  of  individual  responses, 
in  which  fear,  pugnacity,  emulation  or  other  instincts  are 
stimulated  by  their  appearance  in  others.  Furthermore,  if 
imitating  is  a  collective  or  ''social  "  phenomenon,  being  imi- 
tated is  an  individual  phenomenon.  Here  is  new  testimony 
to  the  power  of  the  individual  leader.  Only  the  man  of 
force,  the  man  of  commanding  prestige,  is  imitated;  and 
what  shall  through  his  prestige  come  to  be  generally  adopted 
or  believed  or  admired,  may  be  the  product  of  his  own  origi- 
nality and  invention. 

1  For  an  application  of  such  views  to  historical  events,  cf.  Le  Bon's  Psychology 
of  Revolution  and  his  Psychology  cj  ihc  Great  War. 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIETY 


8l 


Furthermore,  there  is  a  notable  reaction  at  present  against 
the  whole  emphasis  on  irrational  forces  in  human  conduct. 
Yesterday  imitation  was  invoked  to  explain  everything. 
To-day  psychologists  are  turning  to  a  study  of  the  learning 
process,  and  taking  their  cue  from  animal  behavior  are  at- 
taching primary  importance  to  trial  and  error,  or  to  learning 
by  experience}  Likeness  of  behavior  may  be  largely  ac- 
counted for  by  the  similarity  of  needs,  and  the  similarity  of 
conditions  under  which  men  learn  to  satisfy  these  needs. 
Learning  by  experience  is  evidence  of  intelligence,  rather 
than  of  blindness  and  passivity.  Instincts  there  doubtless 
are;  but  these  instincts  are  almost  limitlessly  modifiable  and 
subject  to  control.  Conduct  is  not  the  direct  product  of 
instinct,  but  a  re-forming,  redirecting  and  correlation  of 
instincts,  in  which  the  cognitive  faculties  play  the  dominant 
part.  If  we  must  use  the  term  instinct  to  cover  whatever  is 
native  to  the  mind,  then  we  must  admit  an  instinct  of 
thought,  and  recognize  its  regulative  and  organizing  roie.^ 

Finally,  it  must  be  remarked  that  the  discovery  and  under- 
standing of  what  is  irrational  in  conduct  is  itself  the  work  of 
reason.  To  recognize  the  force  of  unreason  is  to  be  less  sub- 
ject to  that  force;  to  understand  is  to  control.  Hence  in  so 
far  as  the  individual  understands  the  impersonal  social  forces 
that  play  upon  him,  the  better  is  he  enabled  to  master  these 
forces  and  use  them  in  accordance  with  his  deliberate  pur- 
pose. This  conclusion  justifies  the  hopeful  belief  that  even 
world-wide  catastrophes  like  the  present  war  are  the  result 
of  forces  that  may  be  controlled  by  individual  decisions  and 
regulated  by  calculated  policies. 


III.    SOCIETY  AS   A   DISTINCT   ENTITY 

All  sociologists  agree  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  society, 
which  has  its  own  peculiarities.  In  any  complete  museum 
of  existence,  containing  specimens  of  everything  in  nature 
that  has  manifested  any  individuality  or  ways  of  its  own, 

»  Cf.,  e.g.,  the  writings  of  E.  L.  Thomdike. 
*  Cf.  Graham  Wallas's  Great  Society, 


82 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


there  would  have  to  be  societies,  as  well,  for  example,  as 
volcanoes  and  elephants.  This  is  not  intended  as  a  eulo- 
gistic or  edifying  contention.  Societies  may  be  the  noblest 
things  in  the  world,  or  they  may  be  pests;  the  point  is  that 
there  are  such  things.  Nor  is  it  a  matter  of  logical  necessity; 
it  is  only  a  fact,  be  it  reasonable  or  unreasonable.^  If  you 
take  the  whole  of  a  group  of  mankind  into  your  view,  you 
can  see  that  there  are  arrangements  of  parts  and  modes  of 
behavior  that  you  would  otherwise  lose  sight  of.  In  respect 
of  such  structures  and  functions,  the  group  such  as  the 
French,  rather  than  the  individual  such  as  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte, is  the  unit  of  discourse.  In  this  general  contention  all 
sociologists  are  agreed;  nor  can  there  be  any  doubt  raised 
against  it.  But  some  sociologists  go  further  and  insist  that 
the  social  entity  is  something  independent  of  the  individual 
in  its  nature,  more  original  than  the  individual  in  its  genesis, 
and  more  authoritative  in  its  value. 

The  foremost  contemporary  exponent  of  the  view  that 
societies  form  a  distinct  species  in  the  animal  kingdom,  is 
Emile  Durkheim,  the  brilliant  French  sociologist  whose 
recent  death  is  so  widely  deplored.^  We  are  not  concerned 
here  with  the  details  of  his  studies  of  social  phenomena,  but 
only  with  the  moral  and  political  implications  of  the  general 
view  which  he  represents.  These  he  has  himself  elaborated. 
We  learn  that  the  sanction  or  authority  of  conscience  lies 
in  the  fact  that  its  promptings  are  expressions  of  the  social 
life,  in  which  individuals  participate,  but  which  is  always 
greater  than  any  single  individual,  or  mere  collection  of  in- 
dividuals. In  order  to  understand  this  it  is  necessary  to 
recognize  that  society  is  not  a  collection  of  homogeneous 
units  like  peas  ki  a  pod.  It  is  not  similarity  that  gives  unity 
to  society,  but  solidarity,  interdependence  of  parts,  division 
of  labor.     Oxygen  and  hydrogen  combined  in  certain  pro- 

1  Durkheim's  chief  writings  are  De  la  division  du  travail  social,  and  The 
Elementary  Forces  of  the  Religious  Life  (English  translation  by  J.  W.  Swain). 
There  is  a  good  summary  of  Durkheim  with  a  collection  of  extracts  m  G.  Davy. 
Emile  Durkheim,  series  des  Grandes  Philosophes.  Cf.  also  L^vy-Bruhl  {Les 
fonctions  mentales  dans  les  societes  inferieures),  Bougl6  and  others  of  the  French 
school;  also  J.  M.  Baldwin  {Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations). 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF   SOCIETY 


83 


portions  form  a  new  substance,  water.  The  hydrogen  is  not 
like  the  oxygen,  —  quite  the  contrary.  It  is  their  specific 
and  complementary  differences  which  explain  their  union. 
Moreover,  when  they  are  united  there  arise  new  properties 
which  were  possessed  neither  by  the  hydrogen  nor  by  the 
oxygen.  So  in  society,  the  social  character  is  not  to  be  found 
in  what  is  average,  or  common,  but  in  those  specific  prop- 
erties of  human  life  which  appear  only  when  there  is  a  union 
of  individuals  of  different  sorts  to  form  a  new  kind  of  human 
substance.  Society  is  not  to  be  explained  by  the  equalizing 
effect  of  imitation.  On  the  contrary  nothing  is  imitated 
unless  it  has  prestige.  But  to  have  prestige  a  thing  must 
already  be  social,  it  must  be  a  property  of  the  social  com- 
pound rather  than  of  the  individual  elements. 

According  to  Professor  Durkheim  society  is  both  the  pro- 
founder  human  fact  and  also  the  more  original.  It  is  as 
though  hydrogen  and  oxygen  existed  only  as  components  of 
water;  and  as  though  their  distinctness  had  come  to  be  recog- 
nized only  by  the  analysis  of  water.  Man  the  individual  is 
nothing  if  not  a  constituent  of  some  human  society.  The 
primitive  forms  of  human  life  and  mind  are  all  social.  The 
social  mind  is  the  original  source  of  all  the  fundamental  cate- 
gories and  beliefs.  Individuality  is  itself  a  product  of  social 
evolution. 

It  is  in  this  view  of  the  priority  of  society  over  the  indi- 
vidual that  the  moral  and  religious  implications  of  such 
a  philosophy  are  to  be  sought. 

I.  Morality  as  a  Social  Fact.  Moral  facts,  according  to 
Durkheim,  consist  of  rules  which  are  distinguished  by  the 
peculiar  consequences  which  attach  to  their  breach  or  ob- 
servance. He  who  breaks  them  is  blamed  or  punished^  and 
he  who  observes  them  is  approved  or  honored.  This  char- 
acter cannot  be  understood  as  an  inherent  property  of  the 
acts  themselves,  or  as  a  "natural  "  consequence  which  flows 
from  them.  It  arises  from  the  fact  that  moral  rules  are  man- 
ifestations of  the  social  mind.  Their  observance  is  **  oblig- 
atory "  in  the  sense  that  they  are  demanded  of  the  individ- 
ual by  the  social  whole  of  which  he  is  a  part.    This  accounts, 


84 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


furthermore,  for  the  fact  that  the  moral  act  though  obliga- 
tory is  not  externally  imposed.  The  agent  is  *' obliged  ''  to 
perform  the  moral  act;  but  at  the  same  time  he  desires  to 
perform  it.  This  is  because  the  individual  through  being  a 
part  of  the  social  mind  imposes  the  act  on  himself.  The 
moral  act  thus  possesses  the  same  quality  that  attaches  to 
*^ sacred  "  objects: 

"The  sacred  object  inspires  us,  if  not  with  awe,  at  least  with  a 
respect  which  divides  us  from  it,  which  holds  us  at  a  distance; 
and  at  the  same  time  it  is  an  object  of  love  and  of  desire;  we  tend 
to  draw  near  to  it,  we  aspire  towards  it.  Here  is  a  double  senti- 
ment which  seems  contradictory,  but  which  is  none  the  less  a 
fact."  1 

The  object  of  moral  action,  furthermore,  is  something 
human,  but  not  something  merely  individual.  It  can  be 
neither  one's  own  private  interest,  nor  the  merely  private 
interest  of  another.  There  must  be  an  object  of  a  higher 
order. 

"We  are  brought,  therefore,  to  this  conclusion:  that  if  there  is 
to  be  any  morality  at  all,  any  system  of  duties  and  obligations, 
society  must  be  regarded  as  a  moral  person  qualitatively  distinct 
from  the  individual  persons  which  it  comprises.  .  .  .  Morality 
begins  only  when  disinterestedness  or  devotion  begins.  But  dis- 
interestedness can  mean  nothing  unless  we  subordinate  ourselves 
to  a  value  higher  than  ourselves  as  individuals.  Now  in  the  world 
of  experience  I  know  of  but  one  subject  that  possesses  a  moral 
reality  richer  and  more  complex  than  our  own,  and  that  is  the 
collectivity."  ^ 

2.  Progress  and  Reform.  But  we  must  now  raise  the 
crucial  question  which  cannot  fail  to  embarrass  a  view  of  this 
type.  The  institutions  of  any  given  society  are  the  out- 
ward expression  of  its  fundamental  social  condition.  This 
is  true  not  only  of  laws,  customs,  and  other  outward  forms 
of  life;  it  is  true  equally  of  codes  and  ideals.  The  historical 
and  comparative  methods  of  sociological  investigation  bring 

*  Davy,  op.  cit.,  p.  156, 
^  Ibidfi  pp,  160-161. 


THE  DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIETY 


8S 


to  light  this  reciprocal  fitness  of  all  the  parts  of  any  individ- 
ual society.  A  striking  example  is  afforded  by  the  two  sets 
of  laws,  morals  and  even  religions  with  which  the  Eskimos 
are  equipped,  the  one  being  suitable  to  the  denser,  more  con- 
gested life  of  winter,  the  other  to  the  sparse  and  scattered 
life  of  summer.  But  our  question  is  this:  What  is  to  be  the 
justification  for  social  change?  Does  this  view  not  suggest 
that  things  are  always  what  they  should  be?  Does  not 
Durkheim  really  argue  from  the  existing  state  of  a  society, 
and  are  not  its  forms  of  life  precisely  what  that  existing  state 
requires?  What  incentive  is  there  for  reform?  What  could 
be  meant  by  progress? 

Professor  Durkheim  tells  us  that  ''save  in  abnormal  cases, 
each  society  has  on  the  whole  the  morality  that  it  needs,  that 
any  other  would  not  only  be  impossible,  but  would  be  fatal 
to  the  society  that  should  practise  it.''  Each  society  con- 
ceives the  ideal  in  its  own  image.  The  only  excuse  for  reform 
lies,  then,  in  the  fact  that  a  society  may,  so  to  speak,  forget 
and  deny  itself,  and  need  to  be  recalled  to  its  senses: 

"The  science  of  ethics  (mceurs)  can  appeal  from  this  momentary 
and  disturbed  moral  conscience  to  that  which  is  more  original  and 
more  constant.  ...  If,  for  example,  a  society  tends  as  a  whole  to 
lose  sight  of  the  sacred  rights  of  the  individual,  can  one  not  correct 
it  authoritatively  by  recalling  how  the  respect  for  these  rights  is 
intimately  bound  up  with  the  structure  of  the  great  European 
societies,  with  the  whole  of  our  mentality,  so  much  so  that  to  deny 
them  on  the  pretext  of  social  interests  is  to  defeat  the  most  essential 
social  interests?''^ 

'  But  there  appears  to  be  a  dilemma  here,  which  Professor 
Durkheim  does  not  escape.  Either  the  scientist  of  morals 
must  reason  from  the  actual  past  or  present  structure  of  the 
given  society,  in  which  case  he  is  always  an  advocate  of  con- 
servatism; or  in  his  own  critical  consciousness  he  will  be 
giving  voice  to  something  new,  which  as  taken  up  by  others 
will  then  become  a  new  social  conscience.  It  is  not  clear 
whether  in  Professor  Durkheim's  view  the  dynamic  or  criti- 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  165,  168-169. 


86 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


cal  function  of  moral  judgment  lies  in  its  tracing  connections 
among  the  existing  institutions  and  the  given  facts  of  social 
organization,  or  whether  it  is  a  forging  of  new  ideals  by 
which  the  future  society  is  to  become  better  than  the  past. 

3.  The  Social  Will  and  the  State.  It  cannot  be  said  that 
the  author  satisfactorily  disposes  of  our  crucial  question. 
M.  Durkheim  must  have  felt  somewhat  hampered  by  his 
own  philosophy  in  dealing  like  a  Frenchman  with  present 
events.  Certainly  such  war  writings  of  his  as  I  have  seen 
contain  no  allusions  to  the  propriety  and  fitness  of  German 
institutions  and  codes,  as  expressing  the  essential  genius  of 
the  German  society! 

This,  however,  must  be  said  in  his  behalf.  He  has  always 
consistently  maintained  that  the  soul  of  a  society  is  to  be 
found  in  the  voluntary  forms  of  civil  life,  such  as  customs, 
science,  art  or  popular  sentiment;  and  not  in  the  state.  In 
other  words,  there  is  no  trace  in  his  philosophy  of  that  modern 
Teutonic  malady  sometimes  known  as  ''statism,''  according 
to  which  the  existing  government  is  declared  to  be  the  in- 
fallible exponent  of  the  national  will  and  destiny.  Statism, 
as  we  shall  see,  unites  in  one  person  or  group  of  persons,  both 
the  military  and  police  power,  and  also  the  moral  authority. 
The  same  agents  may  both  use  force  and  coercion  and  also 
justify  their  use.  To  this  view,  especially  prominent^  in 
German  political  philosophy,  is  sharply  opposed  the  view 
that  the  powers  and  functions  of  the  state  are  delegated  and 
instrumental,  and  that  they  are  answerable  to  the  moral 
judgment  of  the  people.  This  view  Durkheim  accepts.  In 
his  teaching,  the  social  conscience  speaks  with  an  authority 
superior  to  that  of  any  ruler.  If  a  ruler  fails  to  conform  he 
IS  an  anachronism  to  be  superseded  by  some  more  perfect 
expression  of  the  deeper  social  consciousness. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


SOCIALISM  1 

Perhaps  no  one  but  a  philosopher  would  have  the  audacity 
to  announce  socialism  as  an  incidental  topic  to  be  disposed 
of  in  a  single  chapter.  But  the  present  philosopher  has  the 
deliberate  intention  of  avoiding  all  the  serious  technicaUties 
of  the  subject,  and  of  confining  himself  to  superficial  and 
more  or  less  glowing  generalities.  The  technical  difl&culties 
of  socialism  are  mainly  economic,  as  is  also  the  major  part 
of  the  evidence  to  which  one  must  appeal  in  forming  a  sound 
critical  judgment  of  it.  Not  being  an  economist,  the  only 
graceful  as  well  as  safe  thing  that  I  can  do  is  to  evade  these 
issues.  But  there  still  remains,  I  believe,  a  relatively  humble 
task  which  even  an  economically  incompetent  philosopher 
may  undertake. 

Excepting,  of  course,  the  great  nations  themselves,  social- 
ism is,  all  in  all,  probably  the  most  powerful  organized  social 
and  political  force  in  the  world  to-day.  If  this  were  ques- 
tioned, if,  for  example,  one  were  to  claim  greater  power  for 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  there  would  still  remain  the 
fact  that  socialism  is  the  most  powerful  disturbing  and  inno- 
vating agency  abroad  in  the  world  to-day.  This  fact  I 
should  regard  as  incontestable.  In  days  when  men  like 
Trotzky  and  Lenine,  who  were  but  yesterday  exiled  agita- 
tors, are  revolutionizing  the  social  and  political  life  of  a 
hundred  million  people,  negotiating  on  equal  terms  with  the 
proudest  chancelries  of  Europe,  and  playing  a  major  role  in 
formulating  those  terms  of  war  and  peace  that  are  to  set  the 

*  The  word  first  appeared  in  1833  {Poor  Man's  Guardian),  and  obtained  cur- 
rency in  connection  with  the  Robert  Owen  movement  ("The  Association  of 
all  Classes  of  all  Nations").  Two  aspects  of  socialism  are  to  be  considered 
later:  —  its  internationalism  in  the  next  chapter,  and  its  relation  to  Darwinism 
in  Chapter  XI. 

87 


88 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


stage  of  world  history  for  the  next  century  —  in  days  like 
these,  the  importance  of  socialism  does  not  need  to  be  urged 
upon  any  man  who  reads  his  morning  paper. 

This  importance  will  justify,  I  hope,  the  mere  outline 
sketch  of  socialism  which  I  propose  to  give.  I  shall  not  try 
to  solve  its  problems  or  judge  its  claims,  but  only  to  state 
what  it  means,  and  so  put  it  in  its  place  among  the  great 
ideas  that  are  stirring  in  the  mind  of  to-day.  The  scope  of 
my  topic  is  narrowed,  furthermore,  by  my  association  of 
socialism  with  the  influence  of  science.  I  believe  that  all 
things  considered,  this  is  the  proper  context  and  setting  in 
which  to  survey  it,  and  that  we  shall  in  this  way  be  seeing 
that  which  is  central  and  basal  in  socialism.  But,  neverthe- 
less, our  naturaHstic  approach  will  enable  us  to  omit  various 
aspects  of  the  topic  which  would  necessarily  present  them- 
selves if  we  went  about  it  more  systematically. 

There  are  many  kinds  of  socialism,  or  many  issues  on 
which  those  who  accept  the  name  are  divided  among  them- 
selves. I  shall  employ  one  of  these  differences  as  a  means  of 
dividing  the  topic  for  purposes  of  exposition.  We  have  on 
the  one  hand  the  philanthropic  type  of  socialism,  and  on  the 
other  hand  the  militant,  or  scientific  type  of  socialism.  This 
distinction  is  not  an  absolute  one.  It  would  be  absurd  to 
contend  that  the  socialism  of  Kingsley  or  Proudhon  was  in 
no  sense  influenced  by  science;  and  it  would  be  still  more 
absurd  to  say  that  the  followers  of  Karl  Marx  are  not  in  the 
least  actuated  by  the  love  of  men.  But  there  is  a  great  dif- 
ference of  motive  and  temper  of  mind  between  socialists  of 
these  two  types;  a  difference  great  enough  in  the  heat  of 
partisan  conflict  to  make  them  enemies  instead  of  allies.^ 

1  In  addition  to  the  above  we  may  mention  three  other  lines  of  cleavage: 
(i)  that  between  the  advocates  of  a  national  centralization  of  the  means  of  pro- 
duction, and  the  advocates  of  its  local  ownership  by  the  commune,  town- 
ship, etc.;  (2)  that  between  those  who  advocate  distribution  according 
to  needs  ("From  each  according  to  his  ability,  to  each  according  to  his  needs") 
and  those  who  advocate  distribution  proportionally  to  social  contribution  in 
the  shape  of  labor,  skill,  etc.;  (3)  that  between  the  orthodox  Marxians  or 
advocates  of  revolutionary  class-war,  and  the  "Revisionists,"  "Reformists," 
"Fabians  "  or  opportunists. 


SOCIALISM 


89 


I.    PHILANTHROPIC  SOCIALISM 

I.  Its  Ethical  Basis.  Philanthropic  socialism  is  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  sequel  to  the  French  Revolution.  Its  birth- 
place is  France,  where  its  first  exponents  were  Saint-Simon 
and  Fourier,  who  flourished  just  after  the  Napoleonic  era. 
Its  first  English  exponent  was  Robert  Owen,  a  contemporary 
of  Saint-Simon  and  Fourier.  Since  these  early  days  it  has 
been  merely  the  most  radical  wing  of  the  whole  democratic 
and  philanthropic  movement,  in  which  the  principles  of  the 
French  Revolution  and  of  primitive  Christianity  have  been 
applied  to  modern  industrial  conditions.  Like  the  French 
Revolution  it  is  dogmatic  in  temper,  and  it  rests  upon  sub- 
stantially the  same  ethical  axioms.  Man,  however  humble 
his  station  and  attainments,  is  fundamentally  innocent  and 
deserving.  The  evils  of  life  are  curable  evils  because  they 
spring  not  from  human  nature  itself,  but  from  the  existing 
social  system.  The  heart  of  man  is  sound.  The  sentiment 
which  moves  these  reformers  is  not  the  hopelessly  sorrowing 
conviction  of  man's  depravity,  but  a  zealous  compassion 
which,  regarding  man  as  the  unfortunate  victim  of  circum- 
stance, proposes  to  rescue  him  and  restore  him  to  his  native 
dignity  and  happiness.  There  is  a  tendency  to  regard  the 
simpler  and  homelier  things  as  better,  for  being  less  tainted 
by  the  vicious  institutions  which  man  has  inflicted  on  him- 
self. So  this  tendency  finds  points  of  contact  not  only  with 
Rousseau,  but  also  with  revivals  of  primitive  Christianity 
like  that  of  Tolstoi.  This  last  motive  finds  expression  in  the 
view  that  manual  labor,  or  the  tilling  of  the  soil,  is  both  more 
innocent  and  more  noble  than  the  artificially  elaborated 
operations  of  the  broker  or  corporation  lawyer.  Indeed  I 
believe  that  the  same  view  has  something  to  do  with  social- 
istic dogma  that  physical  labor  is  the  true  source  of  economic 
value,  that  the  worth  of  a  commodity  in  terms  of  money  is 
simply  a  measure  of  the  physical  exertion  put  into  it. 

Socialism  of  this  type  is  of  course  revolutionary  in  that  it 
proposes  a  thorough-going  social  reconstruction,  and  in  that 
this  reconstruction  is  to  be  brought  about  by  the  protest  and 


90 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


assertion  of  those  who  most  need  it.  But  its  leaders  have 
been  as  a  rule  men  who  were  acting  on  behalf  of  others, 
rather  than  on  their  own  behalf.  They  have  not  been  men 
with  a  grievance,  embittered  by  oppression  or  misfortune, 
but  rather  men  of  heart  moved  to  an  ardent  championship 
of  the  rights  of  others.  So  their  dominant  motives  have 
been  those  of  compassion  and  benevolence  rather  than  those 
of  resentment  and  hostility.  Many  socialists  of  this  type 
have  been  simply  reformers  or  Christian  ministers,  adopting 
socialism  as  a  method  of  poor  reUef  or  other  social  service. 
With  this  attitude  of  pity  and  affection  for  the  unfortunate, 
there  has  not  infrequently  been  mingled  something  of  that 
feehng  of  paternal  indulgence  which  the  more  self-respecting 
among  the  unfortunate  so  strongly  resent. 

2.  Emphasis  on  the  Economic  Motive.  But,  you  may 
well  ask,  if  this  be  socialism,  what  is  the  difference  between 
philanthropic  sociaUsm  and  philanthropy  in  general?  In 
my  haste  to  expound  the  philanthropy  of  it  I  have  so  far 
omitted  the  socialism.  Let  me  therefore  state  at  once  that 
the  sociahsm  of  it  lies  in  its  preoccupation  with  the  economic 
or  industrial  aspect  of  life.  The  evils  which  claim  attention 
are  economic  evils,  and  the  remedies  which  are  proposed  are 
economic  remedies. 

These  economic  evils  are  new  evils  resulting  from  the  great 
industrial  revolution  of  modern  times.  The  facts  are  vividly 
present  to  all  of  us;  and  the  causes  scarcely  less  so.  The 
passing  of  feudalism  tended  to  drive  the  peasants  off  the 
land.  The  voyages  of  discovery  opened  trade  routes  and 
developed  world  markets.  Most  important  of  all,  modern 
science  and  invention  led  to  the  factory  system  in  which 
industry  is  concentrated  and  mechanized.  The  social  con- 
sequences followed  inevitably:  the  congestion  of  population 
in  large  manufacturing  cities;  the  wage  system;  the  massing 
of  capital  in  the  hands  of  a  few;  the  absolute  control  of  in- 
dustry and  of  all  who  depend  on  industry  by  those  who  con- 
trol the  capital. 

Thus  there  came  into  being  a  new  tyranny  and  a  new 
slavery.    The  new  tyrant  was  the  owner  of  the  means  of 


SOCIALISM 


91 


production,  who  could  fix  wages  and  hire  or  dismiss  his  em- 
ployees as  he  saw  fit.  The  new  slave  was  the  wage-earner, 
too  poor  and  too  ignorant  to  find  alternative  means  of  liveli- 
hood; and  so  at  the  mercy  of  those  who  paid  him  for  his  labor, 
but  paid  him  as  little  as  possible  and  employed  him  only  so 
long  as  they  saw  fit.  Serfs  had  been  bound  to  the  soil  with 
a  guarantee  of  permanence  and  sustenance.  Body  slaves 
had  been  the  property  of  their  owner,  who  had  therefore  had 
a  selfish  reason  for  treating  them  as  well  as  his  other  domesti- 
cated animals.  But  the  hired  laborer  was  a  tool  to  be  used 
or  misused,  and  flung  aside  as  convenience  or  caprice  might 
dictate.  The  new  urban  life  brought  new  aggravations  of 
poverty  in^he  shape  of  unsanitary  housing.  The  helpless- 
ness of  the  wage-earner  cut  him  off  from  enjoying  the  bene- 
fits of  that  very  wealth  and  material  progress  to  which  he 
was  contributing.  He  lived  in  what  was  called  an  era  of 
civilization,  and  he  belonged  to  what  were  called  civilized 
nations;  but  this  civilization  was  not  for  him.  Huddled  to- 
gether miserably  with  the  masses  of  his  fellows  he  supported 
this  civilization  on  his  shoulders,  but  himself  lived  in  a  dark 
under- world  which  its  light  and  warmth  never  reached. 

As  a  whole  man  was  not  more  miserable  than  formerly; 
all  in  all  he  was  less  so.  But  he  was  miserable  in  a  new  way; 
and  the  spectacle  of  his  misery  aroused  new  emotions  and 
new  plans  for  his  relief.  Laveleye,  the  Belgian  economist 
of  the  last  century,  expressed  this  as  follows: 

"The  message  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  man  was:  'Thou 
shalt  cease  to  be  the  slave  of  nobles  and  despots  who  oppress  thee; 
thou  art  free  and  sovereign.'  But  the  problem  of  our  times  is: 
'  It  is  a  grand  thing  to  be  free  and  sovereign,  but  how  is  it  that  the 
sovereign  often  starves?  How  is  it  that  those  who  are  held  to  be 
the  source  of  power  often  cannot,  even  by  hard  work,  provide 
themselves  with  the  necessaries  of  life?  ' "  ^ 

The  new  evil  being  economic,  the  remedy  must  be  eco- 
nomic.    The  root  of  the  evil  was  the  control  of  industry  by 

^  Quoted  frc«n  E.  de  Laveleye:  "Communism,"  Contemporary  Review, 
March,  1890,  by  Benjamin  Kidd,  Social  Evolution,  p.  4.  Cf.  also  H.  George; 
Progress  and  Poverty,  Introduction. 


92 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


a  few  capitalists,  who  were  legally  entrenched  behind  the 
institution  of  private  property.  The  cure  lay  in  breaking 
this  control  by  transferring  the  ownership  of  the  means  of 
production  to  the  community  as  a  whole,  or  to  the  workers 
themselves.  In  this  way,  it  was  believed,  men's  economic 
status,  like  their  political  status,  might  be  equalized;  and 
all  men  be  enabled  to  enjoy  the  blessings  which  the  genius 
and  invention  of  man  had  now  added  to  the  natural  resources 
of  the  earth. 

In  all  this  you  will  recognize  orthodox  humanitarianism 
applied  to  new  conditions.  It  makes  a  new  diagnosis  of 
human  misery,  and  advocates  a  new  remedy.  But  it  is  not 
consciously  revolutionary  in  its  ethical  ideals,  nor  is  it  ani- 
mated by  any  irreconcilable  hostilities.  It  aims  at  a  decent 
Christian  reform  of  existing  evils.  It  thinks  of  the  lot  of  the 
human  individual  and  seeks  to  ameUorate  it.  This  sobriety 
and  traditionalism  in  the  moral  temper  of  socialism  appears, 
for  example,  in  this  paragraph  written  by  J.  Ramsay  Mac- 
donald,  the  former  leader  of  the  Labor  Party  in  England. 

"Socialism  is  the  creed  of  those  who,  recognizing  that  the 
community  exists  for  the  improvement  of  the  individual  and  for 
the  maintenance  of  liberty,  and  that  the  control  of  the  economic 
circumstances  of  life  means  the  control  of  life  itself,  seek  to  build 
up  a  social  organization  which  will  include  in  its  activities  the 
management  of  those  economic  instruments  such  as  land  and 
industrial  capital  that  cannot  be  left  safely  m  the  hands  of  in- 
dividuals. This  is  Socialism.  It  is  an  application  of  mutual  aid 
to  politics  and  economics.  And  the  Socialist  end  is  liberty,  the 
liberty  of  which  Kant  thought  when  he  proclaimed  that  every 
man  should  be  regarded  as  an  end  in  himself  and  not  as  a  means  to 
another  man's  end.  The  means  and  the  end  cannot  be  separated. 
Socialism  proposes  a  change  in  social  mechanism,  but  justifies  it 
as  a  means  of  extending  human  liberty.  Social  organization  is  the 
condition,  not  the  antithesis,  of  mdividual  liberty."  ^ 

This  author  is  evidently,  as  an  Englishman,  concerned  to 
reconcile  socialism  with  individualism;  and  so  to  defend  it 
against  such  attacks  as  Spencer  had  made  upon  "State 

^  The  Socialist  Movement,  p.  xi. 


SOCIALISM 


93 


Socialism,"  as  a  union  of  capitalism  and  political  tyranny.^ 
But  the  same  ethical  traditionalism,  the  same  humane  and 
charitable  spirit  and  the  same  individualism  appear  in  the 
writings  of  the  great  French  socialist  Jaures,  who  was  so 
tragically  assassinated  early  in  the  war. 

"In  the  nation,  therefore,  the  rights  of  all  individuals  are 
guaranteed,  to-day,  to-morrow  and  for  ever.  If  we  transfer  what 
was  once  the  property  of  the  capitalist  class  to  the  national  com- 
munity, we  do  not  do  this  to  make  an  idol  of  the  nation,  or  to 
sacrifice  to  it  the  liberty  of  the  individual.  No,  we  do  it  that  the 
nation  may  serve  as  a  common  basis  for  all  individual  activities. 
Social  rights,  national  rights,  are  only  the  geometric  locus  of  the 
rights  of  all  individuals."  ^ 

Such  is  socialism  in  its  broader  and  more  ethical  sense, 
comprising  men  of  every  degree  of  dissent  from  the  harsher 
and  stricter  teachings  of  Karl  Marx,  comprising  even  benevo- 
lent middle-class  socialists,  Protestant  Christian  socialists, 
Catholic  socialists,  or  Tolstoyan  mystics,  and  affiliating  them 
with  the  whole  army  of  radicals  that  is  fighting  for  the  con- 
summation of  social  democracy. 


n.    MILITANT   OR   SCIENTIFIC   SOCIALISM 

I.  General  Exposition.  Militant  or  scientific  socialism 
is  a  sect  with  a  founder  and  a  bible.  The  founder  is  Hein- 
rich  Karl  Marx,  who  lived  in  Germany  from  1818  to  1883. 
The  bible  is  Das  Kapitaly  published  in  1867.  Karl  Marx  is 
sometimes  said  to  be  an  Hegelian.  He  was  such  much  in  the 
sense  that  Robert  Ingersoll  was  a  Christian.  In  other  words, 
happening  to  be  brought  up  as  a  HegeHan,  that  was  the 
philosophy  which  he  revolted  from.  Marx  wrote  at  the 
time  when  the  Hegelian  school  was  breaking  up  in  the  wave 
of  reaction  against  romanticism  and  idealism.  It  was  an 
age  of  realism,  materialism  and  disillusionment.  Those  of 
Hegelian  training  who  exhibited  this  new  tendency  were  said 
to  constitute  the  **  Hegelian  Left."    They  utterly  rejected 

*  Cf.  Man  versus  the  State,  and  the  controversy  with  Laveleye,  in  the  Con- 
temporary Review,  1885. 

*  Jean  Jaures:  Studies  in  Socialism,  English  Translation  (1906),  p.  9. 


94 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


SOCIALISM 


95 


the  spiritual  part  of  the  teaching,  while  retaining  its  histori- 
cal method,  its  emphasis  on  the  conflict  of  social  forces,  and 
something  of  the  dogmatic,  rationalistic  temper  of  the  master 

himself. 

The  teachings  of  Karl  Marx  have  been  modified  or  re- 
interpreted by  his  followers,  but  they  still  remain  as  the  great 
germinating  intellectual  force  in  the  movement.  There  are 
said  to  be  three  main  teachings:  (i)  the  doctrine  of  ''surplus 
value;"  (2)  the  doctrine  of  class  war;  and  (3)  the  doctrine 
of  "economic  determinism.''  The  first  of  these  is  a  technical 
economic  doctrine.  Labor,  according  to  this  doctrine,  is  the 
source  of  whatever  value  a  commodity  possesses;  but  the 
laborer  gets  only  a  small  fraction  of  it,  the  rest,  the  ''surplus 
value,"  being  appropriated  by  the  capitalist.  Practically 
this  means  that  the  socialist  is  going  to  distribute  wealth 
among  the  workers,  who  have,  as  he  thinks,  created  it.  As 
a  theory  it  has  connections  with  the  teachings  of  Ricardo  and 
the  British  economists,  and  is  an  important  phase  in  the 
development  of  economic  science  proper;  but  we  have  no  con- 
cern with  it  here  except  in  so  far  as  I  have  suggested  its  con- 
nection with  the  old  revolutionary  idea  of  the  native  worth 
of  man. 

The  second  of  these  doctrines  involves  ideas  which  must 
await  a  fuller  and  more  independent  treatment.  The  doc- 
trine of  class  war  involves  the  Darwinian  idea  of  struggle  for 
existence;  and  also  the  newer  vitaHstic  idea  that  struggle  and 
heroic  adventure  is  an  end  in  itself.  These  ideas  are  too  im- 
portant to  introduce  incidentally  here,  and  so  we  must  post- 
pone this  phase  of  Marxian  socialism  until  we  shall  have 
filled  in  the  necessary  philosophical  background.  It  must 
suffice  here  to  point  out  that  the  tone  and  animus  of  Marxian 
socialism  is  largely  due  to  this  doctrine.  The  Marxian  so- 
cialist is  irreconcilable,  sometimes  even  truculent.  Trot- 
zky,  for  example,  appears  from  his  recent  writings  to  be  an 
orthodox  Marxian;  and  you  scarcely  think  of  him  as  a  pecu- 
liarly gentle,  humble  or  tender-minded  soul.  These  men 
propose  to  spoil  the  Egyptians.  They  confidently  expect  to 
fight  for  their  class  and  to  expropriate  the  present  owners  of 


4 


wealth,  the  bourgeoisie^  by  force.  There  is  a  trace,  I  think, 
of  that  feeling  which  sometimes  expresses  itself  in  the  hope 
that  the  present  war  will  not  end  until  the  Germans  have 
known  what  it  is  to  have  the  war  on  their  own  soil.  The 
dispossessed  proletariate  are  not  unwilling  that  the  enemy 
class  should  know  what  it  is  to  suffer.  These  militant  so- 
cialists are  not  sentimental  pacificists.  They  do  not  in  the 
least  shrink  from  the  rough  usages  of  war,  or  from  the  exer- 
cise of  force.  They  want  not  peace,  but  a  different  war  in 
which  their  fellow-workers  of  all  nations  shall  unite  against 
the  common  capitalist  enemy  of  all  nations.  From  the  be- 
ginning the  Marxian  faction  have  shown  something  of  the 
hardness  of  the  uncompromising  sectarians,  like  that,  for 
example,  of  Christian  fanatics,  Puritan  or  Catholic.  Thus 
Lasalle,  who  believed  in  political  action,  who  in  1863  founded 
the  Universal  German  Working  Man's  Association,  and 
who  is  chiefly  responsible  for  the  Social  Democratic  move- 
ment in  Germany,  taught  the  workmen  to  regard  them- 
selves as  the  "ruling  class,"  and  urged  them  to  cultivate  the 
stern  virtues  appropriate  to  their  superior  might. 

2.  Economic  Determinism.  But  it  is  the  third  of  the 
Marxian  doctrines  that  I  wish  more  especially  to  emphasize 
in  this  context.  "Economic  determinism"  means  briefly 
that  the  revolution  by  which  the  proletariat  shall  dispossess 
and  supersede  the  bourgeoisie,  is  necessitated  by  the  opera- 
tion of  irresistible  and  predictable  economic  forces.  This 
doctrine  is  a  conscious  expression  of  the  spirit  of  science.^ 
The  Marxians  pride  themselves  on  their  disillusionment. 
They  regard  the  philanthropic  socialists  as  mere  sentimen- 
taHsts,  dreamers,  makers  of  Utopias.  They  regard  them- 
selves not  as  reformers  but  rather  as  men  of  firm  intellects 
who  know  the  world,  and  are  preparing  themselves  and 
others  for  impending  events. 

1  Cf.  Kirkup:  History  of  Socialism,  5th  edition,  pp.  loo-ioi. 

2  Professor  G.  P.  Adams  ("The  Philosophical  Basis  of  Socialism,"  University 
of  California  Chronicle,  Vol.  xv,  No.  I)  speaks  of  socialism  as  "the  conscious 
synthesis  of  radical  democracy  and  natural  science."  Cf.  Ferri,  Socialism  and 
Positive  Science, 


96 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


This  school  proposes  to  adopt  not  only  the  scientific 
method,  but  the  physical  view  of  the  world. 

"For  Hegel,"  says  Marx,  "the  thought  process,  which  he  trans- 
forms into  an  independent  subject  under  the  name  idea,  is  the 
creator  of  the  real,  which  forms  only  its  external  manifestation. 
With  me,  on  the  contrary,  the  ideal  is  nothing  else  than  the  material 
transformed  and  translated  in  the  human  brain."  ^ 

Since  the  historical  point  of  view  of  Hegel  is  retained, 
there  results  a  materiahstic  philosophy  of  history.  As  we 
have  already  seen,  various  materialistic  philosophies  of 
history  have  appeared  in  modern  times,  such  as  the  physio- 
graphic or  ethnological.  With  the  Marxians  the  economic 
forces  are  fundamental,  and  furnish  the  clue  to  all  great  his- 
torical changes.  There  is  a  famous  dictum  that  runs,  ''Tell 
me  what  you  eat  and  I  will  tell  you  what  you  are."  The 
Marxian  says,  ''Tell  me  under  what  economic  system  a 
society  lives,  and  I  will  explain  its  entire  civilization." 
"Morality,  law,  politics  are  only  superstructures,  effects  of 
the  economic  structure,  they  vary  with  it  from  one  clime  to 
another,  from  one  century  to  another  century."^ 

Even  what  we  ordinarily  call  the  laws  of  economic  life, 
those  forces  with  which  orthodox  economic  theory  deals,  hold 
only  for  the  present  industrial  arrangement,  and  do  not 
enable  us  to  predict  the  future.  Human  nature  itself,  with 
those  selfish,  acquisitive  and  emulative  impulses  which  are 
commonly  invoked  to  explain  economic  phenomena,  is  itself 
the  result  of  the  economic  situation  in  which  a  man  finds 
himself.  The  "economic  man"  is  not  a  constant,  but  a 
variable,  varying  with  changes  in  the  general  social  forms  of 
economic  process.  These  last,  since  they  determine  the 
individual's  education  and  his  opportunity,  absolutely  pre- 
scribe what  manner  of  man  he  shall  be. 

This  insistence  on  the  priority  of  economic  causes  in  life, 

1  Translated  by  Kirkup,  History  of  Socialism,  5th  edition,  p.  151. 

2  Ferri:  Socialism  and  Positive  Science,  English  translation,  sth  edition, 
p.  82.  Cf.  Friedrich  Engels,  in  his  book  against  Duhring;  Marx:  Critique  of 
Political  Economy  (1859);  Th.  Rogers:  The  Economic  Interpretation  of  History; 
A.  Loria:  The  Economic  Basis  of  Society. 


SOCIALISM 


97 


leads  the  Marxian  socialist  to  believe  with  the  philanthropic 
socialist  that  present  economic  conditions  are  the  root  of  all 
evil. 

"As  long,"  says  Ferri,  "as  the  economic  basis  of  poHtical,  legal, 
and  moral  life  had  not  been  demonstrated  by  positive  evidence,  the 
aspirations  of  most  men  towards  a  social  amelioration  were  directed 
vaguely  to  the  demand  for,  and  the  partial  conquest  of,  some 
accessory  means,  such  as  freedom  of  worship,  political  suffrage, 
public  instruction,  etc.;  and  certainly  I  have  no  wish  to  deny  the 
great  utility  of  these  conquests.  But  the  sancta  sanctorum  always 
remained  impenetrable  to  the  eyes  of  the  crowd,  and  as  economic 
power  continued  to  be  the  privilege  of  the  few,  all  the  conquests, 
all  the  concessions,  were  without  real  basis,  separated  as  they  were 
from  the  solid  and  fructifying  foundation  which  can  alone  give  life 
and  durable  force.  Now  that  socialism  has  shown,  even  before 
Marx,  but  never  with  so  much  scientific  precision,  that  individual 
appropriation,  private  ownership  of  land  and  of  the  means  of  pro- 
duction, is  the  vital  point  of  the  question,  the  problem  is  laid  down 
in  precise  terms  in  the  consciousness  of  contemporary  humanity."  ^ 

But  the  distinctive  quality  of  Marxian  socialism  appears 
not  in  the  spirit  of  reform,  but  rather  in  the  conviction  that 
man  is  the  puppet  of  irresistible  forces.  This  quality  appears 
strikingly  in  the  following  paragraphs  by  the  same  writer: 

"Thanks  to  it  (the  great  Marxian  principle),  the  annals  of  primi- 
tive humanity,  barbarous  and  civilized,  cease  from  being  a  capri- 
cious and  superficial  kaleidoscope  of  individual  episodes,  and  form 
a  grand  and  fateful  drama,  determined  —  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, in  its  most  intimate  details  as  in  its  catastrophes  —  by 
economic  conditions j  which  form  the  physical  and  indispensable 
basis  of  life,  and  by  the  struggle  of  the  classes  to  conquer  and  pre- 
serve the  economic  forces  on  which  all  the  others  necessarily 
depend.  .  .  .  The  present  organization  of  private  ownership  with- 
out any  limit  to  family  inheritance  and  personal  accumulation; 
the  continual  and  always  more  complete  application  of  scientific 
discoveries  to  men's  work  in  the  transformation  of  matter,  the 
telegraph  and  steam,  the  always  extending  migrations  of  men  — 
cause  the  existence  of  a  family  of  peasants,  of  workmen,  of  small 
tradesmen,  to  be  united  by  invisible  but  tenacious  threads  to  the 

*  E.  Ferri:  op.  cit.,  pp.  65-66. 


98 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Ufe  of  the  world,  and  the  crop  of  coffee,  of  cotton,  or  of  com  in  the 
most  distant  countries  has  its  effect  on  all  parts  of  the  civilized 
world,  just  as  the  decrease  or  increase  of  solar  spots  forms  a  co- 
efficient of  periodical  agricultural  crises  and  directly  influences  the 
lot  of  millions  of  men.  This  grand  conception  of  '  the  unity  of 
physical  forces'  ...  or  of  universal  soUdarity,  throws  far  from  it 
the  childish  conception  which  makes  free  will  and  the  individual 
the  cause  of  human  phenomena."  ^ 

History  is  a  succession  of  economic  revolutions,  each 
rendered  inevitable  whenever  existing  legal  institutions  have 
come  to  impede  rather  than  facilitate  production. 

"The  method  of  production  of  the  material  things  of  life  settles 
generally  the  social,  political  and  spiritual  process  of  life.  It  is 
not  the  consciousness  of  men  that  determines  their  mode  of  exist- 
ence, but  on  the  contrary  their  social  existence  that  determines 
their  consciousness.  At  a  certain  stage  in  their  development  the 
material  productive  forces  of  society  come  into  opposition  with 
the  existing  conditions  of  production  or,  which  is  only  a  legal 
expression  for  it,  with  the  relations  of  property  within  which  they 
have  hitherto  moved.  From  forms  of  development  of  the  forces 
of  production,  these  relations  change  into  fetters.  Then  enters 
an  epoch  of  social  revolution.  With  the  change  of  the  economic 
foundation  the  whole  gigantic  superstructure  (the  legal  and  political 
organizations  to  which  certain  forms  of  consciousness  correspond) 
is  more  slowly  or  more  quickly  overthrown."  ^ 

Such  a  revolution  is  now  impending.  ''  With  the  constantly 
diminishing  number  of  capitalist  magnates  who  usurp  and 
monopolize  all  the  advantages  of  this  process  of  transforma- 
tion, the  mass  of  misery,  oppression,  servitude,  deterioration, 
exploitation,"  is  constantly  increasing  among  the  working 
classes.  This  develops  their  spirit  of  revolt;  while  at  the 
same  time  they  are  being  ^'taught,  united  and  organized 
by  the  mechanism  of  the  capitalist  process  ^  of  production 
itself.''     When  the  class-consciousness  and  discipline  of  the 

1  Ferri:  op.  cit.,  pp.  62-63,  68.  .  .    ,  r.  -n    r 

2  Karl  Marx:  A  Contribution  to  the  Criticism  of  Political  Economy,  Preface; 
quoted  by  Bernstein:  Evolutionary  Socialism,  English  translation,  pp.  7-8- 
The  reader  will  note  the  resemblance  of  this  view  to  that  of  Durkheim  as 
cited  above,  p.  85 . 


SOCIALISM 


99 


workers  is  sufficiently  ripe,  the  control  of  the  means  of  pro- 
duction passes  into  their  hands,  the  transaction  being  simpli- 
fied by  the  steadily  diminishing  number  of  the  capitalists  in 
whom  this  power  is  concentrated. 

Many  Marxians  have  come  to  see  that  the  explanation 
of  history  is  not  so  simple.  Thus  Bernstein,  for  example, 
recognizes  that  the  division  between  the  classes  is  not  so 
clean  cut,  so  unambiguous,  as  Marx  would  have  us  believe. 
But  despite  these  doctrinal  amendments  in  matters  of  detail 
the  essential  quality  of  Marxian  socialism  unmistakably 
persists,  and  still  characterizes  those  who,  like  the  Christians 
of  the  monastic  orders,  stand  as  the  models  of  sectarian  zeal 
and  refuse  to  dilute  their  doctrines  or  compromise  their 
standards.  The  Marxian  is  known  by  two  things:  by  a  cer- 
tain ruggedness,  militancy,  and  harshness  of  temper,  asso- 
ciated with  his  doctrine  of  force;  and  by  his  thoroughly 
scientific,  secular,  disillusioned  and  hard-headed  acceptance 
of  what  he  believes  to  be  the  facts. 

3.  Opposition  to  Religion.  Further  confirmation  of  this 
fundamentally  naturalistic  motive  in  Marxian  socialism  is 
found  in  its  anti-religious  bias.  This  is  doubtless  in  part  due 
to  the  fact  that  religion  being  institutional  and  conservative 
is  identified  with  that  vicious  existing  system  which  the 
economic  revolution  is  to  sweep  away.  But  there  is  the 
same  suspicion  of  religion  as  emotional  and  unproved  that 
characterizes  the  scientist.     There  is  the  same  secularism. 

Religion  has  taught  men  to  regard  the  evils  of  life  as  bless- 
ings in  disguise  or  to  bear  with  wretchedness  and  injustice 
here  below  in  the  expectation  of  compensation  and  reward 
in  another  life.  But  the  socialist  adopts  that  natural  scale 
of  values  according  to  which  a  full  stomach  is  better  than 
an  empty  one.  He  accepts  no  *' spiritual ''  substitute  but 
wants  the  solid  diet  which  the  natural  organism  craves.  And 
he  does  not  propose  to  sacrifice  his  real  chances  in  this  world 
for  more  or  less  speculative  chances  in  another.  Thus  Ferri, 
who  is  especially  explicit  on  this  topic,  remarks  that 

"The  disappearance  of  the  faith  in  something  beyond  when  the 


100 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


poor  wiU  become  the  elect  of  the  Lord,  and  when  the  miseries  o! 
this  'valley  of  tears'  will  find  an  eternal  compensation  in  Paradise, 
gives  more  vigor  to  the  desire  of  a  Uttle  'terrestrial  Paradise'  down 
here  for  the  unhappy  and  the  less  fortunate  who  are  the  most 


"1 


numerous. 

The  same  author,  though,  like  any  anti-clerical,  he  con- 
demns  the  organized  church  for  holding  the  people  in  super- 
stitious subjection,  nevertheless  has  no  fear  of  the  traditional 
religion.     ''Scientific  Culture  "  will  soon  extinguish  it. 

"It  is  because  sociaUsm    knows   and   foresees   that   religious 
beUefs,  whether  we  consider  them  as  pathological  phenomena  of 
human  psychology  or  as  useless  phenomena  of  moral  incrustation, 
must  waste  away  before  the  extension  of  even  elementary  scientific 
culture;  it  is  for  that  reason  that  sociaUsm  does  not  feel  the  neces- 
sity of 'fighting  especially  these  same  religious  beUefs  which  are 
destined  to  disappear.     It  has  taken  this  attitude  even  though  it 
knows  that  the  absence,  or  lessening,  of  the  beUef  in  God  is  one  of 
the  most  powerful  factors  in  its  extension  because  the  pnests  of  all 
reUgions  have  been,  in  all  phases  of  history,  the  most  powerful 
allies  of  the  governing  classes  in  keeping  the  masses  bent  under  the 
yoke,  thanks  to  religious  fascination,  as  the  tamer  keeps  wild 
beasts  under  his  whip." 

Similariy,  Ferri  takes  a  tolerant  and  contemptuous  attitude 
toward  the  Catholic  socialism  of  his  day;  willing  to  have  its 
assistance  for  purposes  of  propaganda  *4n  the  rural  distncts," 
but  confident  that  the  scientific  socialism  of  it  will  remain 
after  the  unscientific  Catholicism  of  it  has  died  away.^ 

»  op.  cit.,  pp.  48-49.    In  the  same  paragraph  the  author  declares  his  adher- 
ence to  the  religion  of  humanity,  such  as  is  described  below,  pp.  iii-nS- 
*  Ferri:  op.  cit.,  pp.  $0-$^' 


CHAPTER  IX 
DEMOCRACY  AND   HUMANITY 


I.    SCIENCE  AND   DEMOCRACY 

I.  Social  Democracy  and  the  Cult  of  Science.  Although 
democracy  is  by  no  means  a  product  of  our  age,  it  has 
nevertheless  recently  received  such  great  accessions  of 
strength  as  to  make  it  indubitably  one  of  the  great  charac- 
teristic ideas  of  our  age.  It  has  spread  wide  its  conquest 
without  in  the  least  abating  its  extremes t  claims.  It  should 
be  understood  that  I  do  not  refer  to  democracy  as  a  form  of 
government  merely,  but  rather  as  an  ideal  of  equality;  to 
what  is  called  ^'social  democracy'*  as  contrasted  with  a 
merely  political  democracy.  That  tendency  of  our  age 
which  has  been  working  most  profoundly  for  the  growth  of 
democracy  is,  I  am  convinced,  that  same  scientific  ten- 
dency to  which  I  have  already  ascribed  so  much  influence. 

Science,  as  we  have  seen,  is  essentially  without  reverence 
for  what  is  established  or  in  any  sense  privileged.  It  pro- 
poses to  prove  all  things,  and  to  accept  nothing  merely 
because  it  is  on  the  ground  and  already  enjoys  the  respect 
of  mankind.  Science  is  then  by  implication  antagonistic  to 
social  privilege,  or  to  political  authority,  wherever  that 
authority  rests  on  the  past  or  on  a  sentiment  of  respect  for 
superiors.  A  scientific  age  is  in  its  general  temper  an  age 
congenial  to  radicalism;  and  democracy,  at  least  in  the 
present  historical  context,  is  a  phase  of  radicalism. 

Every  scientist,  furthermore,  is  himself  a  ^^  self-made  man." 
He  owes  his  strictly  scientific  attainment  to  his  own  efforts 
and  to  the  endowment  with  which  nature  has  equipped 
him.  Whatever  elevation  in  life  he  reaches  is  not  an  arti- 
ficial status  created  by  institutions  or  traditions,  but  a 
measure  of  solid  achievement.     The  scientist,  therefore,  re- 

lOI 


I02 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


spects  man  for  what  he  is  rather  than  for  his  class  or  station. 
The  cult  of  science  carries  with  it,  just  as  it  did  formerly  m 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  a  glorification  of  man's  intellectual 
faculties-  and  this  in  turn  carries  with  it  the  suggestion  of 
human  equahty.  Not  that  men  are  equal  in  intellectual 
attainment,  any  more  than  in  wealth  or  poHtical  power. 
But  while  wealth  and  power  are  altogether  products  of 
social  organization,  intellectual  attainment  rests  upon  some- 
thing inherent  in  the  man  himself.  And  with  the  capacity 
for  knowledge,  the  germ  of  reason,  all  men  are  endowed. 
The  more  this  capacity  is  glorified,  the  greater  the  im- 
portance which  is  attached  to  that  in  which  men  are  alike, 
instead  of  that  in  which  they  differ. 

Over  and  above  this  general  regard  for  the  intellect  as  in- 
herently and  universally  human,  there  is  an  affinity  between 
democracy  and  the  specifically  scientific  type  of  intellec- 
tual attainment.     It  is  not  accidental  that  the  growth  of 
democracy  has  been   associated  with   the  dechne  of   the 
classical  curriculum  and  ideal  of  culture.     I  do  not  say  this 
in  praise  of  democracy.     It  is  perhaps  one  of  the  unfortu- 
nate by-products  of  democracy,  of  which  there  are  undoubt- 
edly many.     But  the  classically  educated  person  belonged 
essentially  to  the  caste  of  the  gentleman.     His  educational 
attainments  were  accomplishments  which  were  not  judged 
by  standards  of  utility,  but  which  were  sufficiently  justified 
by  their  being  agreeable  and  decorous.     The  classical  edu- 
cation was  an  education  for  leisure,  for  peace,  for  perfection; 
not  a  sharpening  of  the  tools  of  trade.     But  science  is  m- 
controvertibly  useful.     Even   the  workman,   who   has   no 
leisure  and  who  instead  of  perfecting  himself  must  fit  lum- 
self  in  where  he  can  make  a  living,  —  even  he  should  find 
time  for  it.     The  vogue  of  science,  then,  has  stimulated 
popular  education.     It  has  met  the  demand  for  an  intel- 
lectual pabulum  that  may  be  freely  and  pubhcly  distrib- 
uted, and  yet  be  a  proper  working  diet  for  the  jnasses  of 
men  who  must  live  by  the  sweat  of  the  brow  rather  than  by 
the  nobility  of  its  proportions  and  dimensions. 
On  the  other  hand  science  tends  to  equalize  men  in  so 


DEMOCRACY  AND  HUMANITY 


103 


far  as  it  makes  them  an  object  of  study.  For  science,  all 
men  belong  to  one  animal  species.  Attention  is  directed  to 
the  common  characteristics  of  the  species,  rather  than  to 
the  exceptional  endowment,  advantages  or  circumstances 
of  the  individual.  For  the  biologist,  king  and  peasant, 
noble  and  commoner,  capitalist  and  laborer  are  all  so  many 
organisms,  similarly  equipped  with  muscular,  circulatory, 
respiratory,  nutritive  and  nervous  systems,  and  by  such 
equipment  adapted  to  a  physical  environment  and  to  the 
struggle  for  physical  existence.  For  the  psychologist  men 
of  every  social  station  are  primarily  minds  of  the  same 
type,  similarly  equipped  with  sense  capacities,  memory, 
association  and  the  power  of  thought.  Even  a  scientific 
sociology  or  political  science,  however  much  attention  it 
may  give  to  the  causes  by  which  societies  are  internally 
differentiated,  by  which  some  men  are  exalted  and  others 
debased,  does  not  encourage  a  sentiment  of  reverence  to  any 
actually  existing  instances  of  eminence.  Science  is  no  re- 
specter of  persons.  Its  task  is  to  reveal  the  common  clay, 
the  identical  mechanism,  the  general  forces,  which  underlie 
the  superficial  pageantry  of  life. 

2.  Social  Democracy  and  the  Results  of  Science.  When 
we  turn  to  the  results  of  science,  rather  than  to  its  general 
attitude,  we  again  find  a  tendency  to  promote  the  growth 
of  democracy.  Thus  the  philanthropic  regard  for  the 
unfortunate  —  for  the  poor,  the  sick,  the  ignorant  —  has 
received  a  fresh  impetus  from  the  successes  of  science.  There 
has  developed  a  scientific  in  the  place  of  a  merely  senti- 
mental philanthropy.  Poor  relief  is  based  on  economic  or 
psychological  principles;  sickness  is  attacked  systematically 
by  preventive  methods  of  sanitation  or  hygiene;  insanity, 
feeble-mindedness,  maladaptation,  even  criminaUty,  are  at- 
tacked by  the  new  methods  of  mental  pathology;  education 
is  standardized  by  psychology  and  distributed  in  accordance 
with  principles  of  administrative  efficiency  and  social  policy. 

Philanthropy  or  humanitarianism  thus  organized  and 
directed  by  science  is  nevertheless  as  much  as  ever  an  in- 
terest in  equality.     It  is  an  interest  in  those  who  have 


104 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDE.\LS 


fallen  below  a  certain  minimum  of  well-being;  it  is  a  pur- 
pose to  raise  them  to  that  minimum  rather  than  to  raise 
the  maximum  higher.  Though  there  may  be  no  express 
hostility  to  the  more  developed  cultural  activities,  never- 
theless the  motive  of  philanthropy  is  to  bring  up  those  who 
have  fallen  behind,  even  if  it  be  necessary  to  halt  the  van- 
guard of  human  attainment.  So  long  as  there  is  a  single 
human  being  starving,  every  other  consideration  is  to  be  sub- 
ordinated to  getting  that  man  fed.  It  will  be  time  to  think 
of  perfection  —  such  is  the  feeling  of  the  philanthropist 
—  when  those  who  are  in  deadly  peril  have  been  brought 
to  a  place  of  safety.  The  effect  of  such  a  sentiment,  whether 
intended  or  not,  is  to  retard  the  head  of  the  column,  accel- 
erate the  rear,  and  so  to  bring  more  and  more  of  marching 
humanity  abreast  into  line.  The  scientific  movement  has 
undoubtedly  strengthened  this  sentiment,  and  rendered  it 
more  effective.  Above  all,  as  we  have  se^n,  it  has  tended 
to  convert  a  merely  emotional  and  intermittent  philan- 
thropy into  a  broad  and  consistent  policy  of  social  amelio- 
ration. Problems  of  human  welfare  are  now  regarded  as 
community  problems,  to  be  undertaken  by  responsible 
authorities.  Instead  of  the  individual  hero  who  takes  off 
his  coat  and  jumps  in  because  he  happens  to  be  passing  by, 
we  have  the  organized  relief,  or  better  still,  the  organized 
prevention,  of  general  types  of  human  malady. 

However  the  consequences  may  be  obscured  or  depre- 
cated by  monarchs  such  as  those  of  the  Central  Powers, 
this  wholesale  and  methodical  relief  points  straight  to  social 
democracy.  The  full  consequences  may  be  postponed  by 
methods  which  highly  centralized  military  governments  know 
so  well  how  to  use.  But  it  is  absolutely  inevitable  that 
when  men  reach  a  certain  level  of  emancipation  from  igno- 
rance and  poverty,  they  should  insist  upon  going  all  the 
way.  There  is  no  safe  foundation  for  social  aristocracy  or 
political  absolutism  save  the  helpless  misery  and  blindness 
of  the  masses  of  the  people.  Help  them  to  their  feet,  and 
they  will  soon  help  themselves. 

The  results  of  science  have  conduced  to  democracy,  not 


DEMOCRACY   AND   HUMANITY 


105 


only  through  promoting  scientific  philanthropy,  but  also, 
and  perhaps  more  profoundly,  through  causing  that  indus- 
trial revolution  which  we  have  recently  considered  in  con- 
nection with  socialism.  Modern  industrialism  has  resulted 
primarily  from  the  use  of  machinery,  in  production  and  in 
transportation.  Modern  industrialism  is  mainly  respon- 
sible for  two  great  class-movements,  that  of  the  bourgeoisiey 
and  that  of  the  laboring-classes,  skilled  or  unskilled.  The 
bourgeoisie,  the  class  which  has  exploited  the  new  industrial 
opportunity  and  amassed  unprecedented  wealth,  has  on  the 
whole  been  liberal  in  its  social  and  political  ideals.  It  fought 
and  won  the  great  battle  against  hereditary  privilege.  It 
gave  prestige  to  commercial  activities  and  so  opened  the 
opportunity  of  social  recognition  to  every  participant  in 
industry,  whether  high  or  in  the  scale.  Even  the  laborer 
might  regard  himself  as  eligible,  provided  only  he  had  the 
luck  and  the  talent  to  get  to  the  top.  Thus  there  developed 
the  self-made  magnate,  whom  the  mass  of  his  envious  in- 
feriors regarded  as  one  of  themselves,  distinguished  only  by 
the  degree  of  his  success. 

But  such  successes  are  too  rare  and  difficult,  for  the  vast 
majority  of  mankind  too  hopelessly  unattainable,  to  satisfy 
the  demand  for  equality.  Bourgeoisie  liberalism  becomes 
in  turn  the  object  of  attack  for  new  and  more  radical  demo- 
cratic movements.  For  these  also  the  industrial  system  has 
been  largely  responsible.  For  it  has  mobilized  labor;  bring- 
ing it  together  in  great  congested  masses,  forcing  it  to  act 
solidly  in  its  own  interest,  and  fusing  it  emotionally  by 
common  grievances,  resentments  and  ambitions.  Thus  to- 
day we  face,  as  a  direct  outgrowth  of  modern  industrialism, 
a  formidable  movement  to  pull  down  the  whole  superstruc- 
ture of  society  by  the  expropriation  of  the  propertied  classes 
and  the  distribution  of  wealth  among  those  who,  not  having 
had  it,  most  eagerly  and  most  bitterly  covet  it. 

3.  Science  and  Political  Democracy.  Over  and  above 
these  causes  by  which  science  has  tended  to  promote  the 
idea  of  social  democracy,  there  is  a  further  cause  which  has 
tended  especially  to  promote  political  democracy.     It  is  in 


io6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


DEMOCRACY  AND   HUMANITY 


keeping  with  the  experimental  and  matter-of-fact  temper  of 
science  that  institutions  should  be  judged  by  their  utiUty. 
Nothing  is  to  be  supported  merely  because  it  has  antiquity 
or  prestige.  It  must  justify  itself  by  its  works.  Applied 
to  the  state,  this  means  that  the  state  is  a  mechanism  con- 
trived to  serve  a  certain  use,  and  to  be  scrapped  whenever 
it  proves  obsolete  or  uneconomical.  The  interest  in  govern- 
ment tends,  then,  to  take  the  form  of  increasing  its  useful- 
ness, more  especially  on  the  administrative  side.  No  gov- 
ernment can  hope  to  stand  which  does  not  do  its  work  well, 
and  make  at  least  a  show  of  service  to  its  constituents.^ 

The  German  government  has,  as  we  shall  see,  an  inde- 
pendent ground  of  appeal  in  the  religious  patriotism  by 
which  Germans  make  an  idol  of  the  state.     This  is  a  wholly 
different  matter,  to  be  explained  only  in  terms  of  a  peculiar 
philosophical  tradition.     But  even  the  German  government 
depends  on  its  efficiency,  on  the  widespread  belief  among 
its  constituents  that  they  are  well  policed,  well  transported, 
well   defended,   and   well   insured.     Now   in   Germany,   as 
elsewhere,  the  logic  of  this  sort  of  appeal  is  unmistakable. 
It  means  that  the  ultimate  appeal  is  to  the  constituents,  to 
the  people,  whose  individual  welfare  is  affected  by  acts  of 
government.     It  implies  that  the  government  is  their  agent, 
whose  services  should  be  supervised,   or  even  in  extreme 
cases  dispensed  with  altogether.     But  this  is  in  principle 
not  only  responsible  government,  it  is  democracy.     It  means 
that  the  court  of  appeal  in  which  ultimate  authority  is 
vested,  is  that  great  pubUc  court  made  up  of  all  those  whose 
interests  are  at  stake.     It  means  that  even  the  Emperor 
William  II  is  responsible  to  this  court,  and  not  merely,  as 
he  would  himself  apparently  prefer,  to  Almighty  God. 

II.    THE   GREAT   SOCIETY 

Cosmopolitanism,  humanitarianism,  and  world-religions 
have  from  early  times  kept  alive  the  idea  that  there  are 
bonds  between  man  and  man  more  fundamental  and  more 
significant  than  those  of  state  or  race.  But  this  idea  is 
characteristic  of  to-day,  not  only  in  its  spread  and  in  the 


I 


1 


107 


degree  of  conviction  with  which  it  is  held,  but  in  the  real- 
istic and  practical  meaning  which  attaches  to  it.  In  our 
day  the  world-wide  humanity  is  not  a  sentiment,  an  ideal, 
or  a  dogma;  it  is  a  fact  and  a  policy.  Mankind  is  one 
great  web  of  inter-related  interests;  and  the  future  peace 
and  well-being  of  the  world  depends  on  accepting  this  fact, 
and  shaping  our  moral  judgments  and  organized  institu- 
tions to  conform  to  it.  In  short,  the  ^' Great  Society,"  as 
Mr.  Graham  Wallas  calls  it,  the  society  of  all  men,  extended 
through  space  and  enduring  through  time,  is  a  simple  mat- 
ter of  fact,  discovered  and  in  large  part  created  in  the  age 
to  which  we  belong. 

I.  Economic  Internationalism.  I  propose  first  to  con- 
sider internationalism  in  the  socialistic  sense,  since  that 
will  at  once  bring  into  view  one  of  the  most  important 
aspects  of  the  Great  Society,  namely,  its  economic  aspect. 
The  socialist  movement  was  consciously  international  as 
early  as  1864,  which  saw  the  inauguration  of  the  ^'Inter- 
national Workingmen's  Association."  This  having  expired 
in  1873,  it  was  eventually  replaced  in  1889  by  the  so-called 
"New  International."  The  resolutions  passed  at  the  three 
congresses  held  at  Amsterdam,  Stuttgart  and  Copenhagen 
between  1900  and  1910  have  been  thus  summarized  by 
J.  Ramsay  Macdonald: 

"Militarism  has  been  condemned  and  a  citizen  army  approved 
instead  of  a  conscript  army  where  that  is  in  vogue;  international 
strife  has  been  declared  to  be  the  result  of  capitalistic  rivalry; 
imperialism  and  an  acquiring  of  colonies  have  been  opposed  on  the 
ground  that  they  are  only  a  form  of  exploitation  of  the  weaker 
races  and  the  fruits  of  the  struggle  in  which  capitalism  is  engaged 
to  expand  markets  at  any  cost.  A  reasoned  policy  of  co-operation 
between  Socialists  and  trade-union  bodies  has  been  drafted  and 
...  a  detailed  series  of  propositions  laying  down  the  conditions 
under  which  the  emigration  and  immigration  of  workmen  should 
proceed  has  been  carried.  A  sketch  code  of  international  labor 
laws  has  been  agreed  upon,  and  measures  dealing  with  unemploy- 
ment discussed  and  accepted.  .  .  .  Socialist  unity  in  the  various 
countries  has  been  recommended,  and  in  addition  to  these  more 
general  subjects,  resolutions  dealing  with  important  questions  of 


io8 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


international  policy,  which  were  before  the  public  when  the  various 
Congresses  sat,  have  also  been  passed."  ^ 

If  we  analyze  this  summary,  we  shall,  I  think,  find  three 
motives  at  work.  In  the  first  place,  as  it  is  expressed  in 
the  Communist  Manifesto,  drawn  by  Marx  and  Engels  in 
1848,  *'The  proletarian  has  no  fatherland."  The  socialist 
divides  men  class-wise  rather  than  nation-wise.  If  you  sup- 
pose vertical  lines  to  divide  nation  from  nation,  you  can 
draw  a  horizontal  line  which  intersects  all  the  others,  and 
which  divides  the  capitalistic  and  propertied  classes  from 
the  laboring  classes.  To  the  socialist  it  is  this  world-wide 
horizontal  cleavage  which  is  important,  and  in  order  to 
widen  it  and  strengthen  his  own  class  against  the  enemy 
class,  he  would  like  to  get  rid  altogether  of  the  vertical 
divisions,  which  confuse  the  workingman's  mind  and  divide 
his  allegiance.  He  therefore  does  everything  in  his  power 
to  diminish  state  loyalty;  and  opposes  international  rival- 
ries and  war  as  the  most  powerful  means  by  which  such 
loyalty  is  intensified. 

In  the  second  place,  he  attacks  international  war  on  the 
ground  that  it  is  waged  in  the  interest  of  the  capitalist 
classes.  The  masses  of  the  people  are  induced  to  fight  by 
an  unscrupulous  appeal  to  their  patriotic  sentiments.  But 
behind  the  more  idealistic  national  purpose  which  moves 
the  people,  there  is  the  struggle  for  colonial  expansion  or 
control  of  world-markets,  induced  by  the  greed  of  capital- 
ists and  waged  exclusively  for  their  profit. 

Finally,  the  military  establishment  itself  is  the  means  by 
which  the  masses  are  held  in  subjection  and  deprived  of 
their  just  rights.  The  pretext  of  national  defense  or  na- 
tional honor  is  used  to  justify  the  creation  of  great  armies 
and  navies,  and  these  are  then  used  in  the  name  of  unity 
and  order  to  preserve  that  economic  status  quo,  from  which 
the  capitalist  class  derives  its  unfair  advantage  over  the 
workers. 

Over  and  against  this  internationalism  of  labor,  which  is 
promoted  by  the  socialists,  there  is  also  an  internationalism 
^  J.  Ramsay  Macdonald:  The  Socialist  Movement ^  pp.  24^241. 


DEMOCRACY  AND   HUMANITY 


109 


of  capital  which  is  an  inevitable  outgrow^th  of  international 
trade.  Though  the  propertied  classes  of  different  nations 
may  to  some  extent  regard  themselves  as  rivals,  their  inter- 
dependence is  more  notable  than  their  conflict  of  interest. 
Indeed  this  is  so  emphatically  the  case  that  it  goes  far  to 
discredit  the  charge  that  commercial  motives  have  been 
directly  responsible  for  the  war.  That  all  buyers  and  sell- 
ers, all  producers  and  consumers  the  world  over,  are  parts 
of  one  system  which  is  affected  as  a  whole  by  prosperity  or 
depression,  is  a  commonplace  of  economic  history.  And 
where  there  is  economic  interdependence,  some  sort  of  social 
organization  is  sure  to  follow.  This  principle  is  well  illus- 
trated by  Royce's  account  of  the  relation  of  public  order  in 
California  to  the  development  of  methods  of  gold-mining. 
Panning  was  the  method  of  the  isolated,  wandering  and  irre- 
sponsible individual.  The  cradle  involved  the  co-operation 
of  several  men,  the  *'long  Tom  "  and  the  sluice  of  more  and 
more,  until  finally  there  grew  up  a  normal  community  of 
interdependent  parts  in  which  it  was  to  the  interest  of  each 
that  all  should  work  peacefully  together  according  to  some 
definite  plan.^  We  may  say  that  the  world  as  a  whole  is 
now  tending  to  form  such  a  community,  in  which  all  men 
shall  co-operate  under  the  rule  of  one  system  of  law. 

The  economic  factor  in  the  Great  Society  is  its  most  solid 
factor.  It  has  played  much  the  same  role  in  the  propaganda 
for  world-peace  that  considerations  of  health  and  efficiency 
have  played  in  the  Prohibition  movement.  It  is  the  un- 
sentimental factor,  that  appeals  to  the  hard-headed  man 
of  affairs.  But  over  and  above  this  we  have  two  other 
factors,  neither  of  them  distinctively  contemporary,  but 
both  operating  to-day  more  powerfully  than  ever  before. 
The  one  of  these  is  the  moral  factor,  the  other  the  cultural 

factor. 

2.  The  Humanitarian  Motive.  The  moral  factor  is  the 
spread  of  the  humanitarian  ethics.  In  principle,  humani- 
tarianism  has  never  recognized  any  boundaries  of  state  or 
It  responds  to  suffering  or  to  need  wherever  these 
*  Cf.  J.  Royce:  California,  American  Commonwealth  Series,  Ch.  IV. 


race. 


no 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


are  felt,  and  whoever  feels  them.     It  has  always  been  the 
special  interest  of  humanitarianism  to  relieve   those  who 
are  in  extremities,  who  are  abused,  excluded,  unprivileged. 
The  missionary's  interest  in  the  heathen  is  a  case  in  point. 
Now  this  interest  has  found  new  objects  in  our  day.     It 
cannot,  I  think,  be  proved  that  men  have  become  more 
compassionate  than  formerly,  but  there  is  now  more  oppor- 
tunity for  compassion  than  there  was.     This  is  not  because 
there  is  more  suffering  or  need,  but  because  in  these  days 
we  know  more  about  what  need  and  suffering  there  is. 
This  is  one  of  the  big  alterations  of  sentiment  that  can,  I 
think,   be  attributed  mainly  to  increased  communication 
between  man  and  man  the  world  round.     When  there  is  a 
flood  in  China  or  a  famine  in  India,  when  women  and  chil- 
dren are  murdered  in  Belgium  or  in  Serbia,  it  is  known  to 
every  rural  storekeeper  in  Vermont  and  to  every  ranger  in 
Texas.     He  can  read  about  it  and  he  can  see  pictures  of  it. 
So  the  natural  human  reactions  of  pity  or  of  resentment 
against  the  abuse  of  one's  kind,  find  new  objects  in  every 
part  of  the  world.     Mankind  are  consciously  fellow-suffer- 
ers, fellows  in  adversity,  as  never  before  in  the  world's 
history. 

3.  The  Cultural  Motive.  By  the  cultural  factor  I  have 
in  mind  as  more  particularly  characteristic  of  this  era,  the 
cosmopohtanism  of  science.  Science  has  always  been  asso- 
ciated with  cosmopohtanism  from  the  time  of  Alexandrian 
Hellenism  down  to  the  present  time.  Scientists  regard 
themselves  as  a  brotherhood  in  which  social  and  pohtical 
distinctions  are  obHterated.  They  feel  themselves  to  be 
working  for  a  common  truth,  for  all  men,  and  for  all  times.' 
It  is  true  that  our  own  day  has  witnessed  a  tendency  to 
regard  science,  in  so  far  as  it  is  an  instrument  of  commerce 
or  war,  as  a  national  asset.  Industrial  and  military  inven- 
tions are  cherished  with  great  secrecy  and  an  attempt  is 
made  to  possess  them  exclusively.  But  no  great  invention 
has  long  remained  a  secret  or  the  exclusive  possession  of 
any  nation.  Sooner  or  later  they  all  go  into  the  great 
common  fund  of  material  civilization  of  which  all  men  are 


DEMOCRACY  AND  HUMANITY 


III 


! 


i 


the  beneficiaries.  And  in  any  case  this  taint  of  nationalism 
infects  only  the  applied  sciences.  In  pure  science  the  aim 
is  impersonal,  the  technique  is  impersonal,  and  the  code 
among  those  who  labor  in  this  field  is  one  of  devotion  to  a 
common  and  humane  object.  The  applications  of  science, 
like  all  instruments,  take  on  the  character  of  the  ends  for 
which  they  are  used.  But  the  cult  of  science,  the  spirit  of 
science,  the  sentiments  and  ideals  to  which  the  vogue  of 
science  has  given  rise,  have  all  contributed  to  the  solidarity 

of  mankind. 

The  ideas  of  democracy  and  of  the  Great  Society  are 
undoubtedly  the  greatest  moving  ideas  of  our  time.  No 
leader  can  hope  to-day  to  stir  the  deepest  moral  sentiments 
of  the  world  without  speaking  in  their  name.  We  shall 
have  to  do  with  them  again,  when  we  undertake  to  discuss 
the  conflicting  ideals  for  which  the  belligerent  nations  are 
to-day  contending.  But  at  this  point  I  wish  to  pass  on  to 
the  religious  turn,  which,  as  might  be  expected,  has  been 
given  to  this  vision  of  a  united  humanity. 

III.    THE  RELIGION   OF  HUMANITY 

Though  man  the  individual  has  rarely  been  regarded  as 
a  suitable  object  of  worship,  and  then  only  when  some  one 
individual  has  been  separated  from  his  fellows  by  a  great 
interval  of  power  and  prestige,  man  as  a  race,  as  the  con- 
tinuous, all-comprehensive  and  developing  social  life,  readily 
takes  on  the  dignity  and  exalted  status  that  religion  re- 
quires for  its  object.  The  development  of  the  idea  of  the 
solidarity  of  mankind  has  thus  brought  into  being  a  new 
religious  cult,  sometimes  not  inappropriately  called  "soci- 
olatry."  The  chief  founder  of  this  cult  was  Auguste  Comte, 
the  French  positivist  whose  acquaintance  we  have  already 

made. 

Comte's  positivism  had  a  considerable  influence  in  Eng- 
land, through  Littre  and  Pierre  Lafitte,  Comte's  French 
disciples,  and  through  the  influential  circle  of  Mill,  Harriet 
Martineau,  George  Henry  Lewes  and  George  Eliot.  Most 
of  these  more  distinguished  thinkers  rejected  the  forms  of 


112 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  Comtean  religion.  But  this  cult  was  taken  up  by 
Richard  Congreve  and  Frederic  Harrison,  and  has  main- 
tained a  somewhat  faltering  existence  for  half  a  century. 
Its  importance  lies  not  in  its  existence  as  a  particular  or- 
ganization, but  as  the  most  self-conscious  attempt  to  create 
an  institutional  and  ceremonial  religion  consistent  with  posi- 
tivism. It  was  largely  actuated  by  a  disapproval  of  what 
was  thought  to  be  the  insincerity  and  inconsistency  of  the 
Broad  Church  movement  in  England  (inaugurated  by  Jow- 
ett  and  others),  and  by  a  feeling  that  nature  and  mystery 
did  not  make  suitable  objects  for  the  religious  consciousness. 
It  was  necessary  to  retain  religion  in  all  its  emotional  and 
social  power,  but  with  entire  intellectual  honesty  and  clear- 
mindedness.    Let  me  quote  from  Frederic  Harrison: 

"Now  classes  are  being  swallowed  up  in  the  Republic;  races 
and  nations  are  being  brought  together;  industry,  science,  human- 
ity are  slowly  asserting  their  superiority.  The  solidarity  of 
Peoples,  the  Federation  of  mankind,  or  what  is  foreshadowed  by 
such  terms,  is  an  idea  which  grows.  ...  If  we  mean  by  Religion 
that  which  makes  man  more  complete,  which  makes  societies 
united,  it  is  plain  that  we  are  more  and  more  converging  towards 
this  state." 

''The  idea  of  basing  a  really  devotional  frame  of  mind,  or  any 
working  enthusiasm  of  a  genuine  kind,  on  any  negation  is  truly 
ludicrous.  But  to  pass  from  Atheism  or  the  assertion  that  there 
is  no  God  —  to  pure  Agnosticism  (that  you  know  nothing  about 
God  or  any  other  object  of  worship),  or  to  Evolution  or  the  laws 
of  matter,  or  infinite  differentiation,  or  the  Unknowable,  or  the 
Universum,  as  Strauss  calls  it,  or  the  Infinite,  as  some  metaphysi- 
cians say,  or  the  All,  or  the  Good,  or  any  other  ideal  of  the  inani- 
mate world;  how  utterly  hollow  is  the  notion  that  any  real  enthu- 
siasm can  be  based  on  this !  .  .  .  This  I  take  to  be  the  one  indis- 
pensable, imperishable,  truth  of  Positivism  —  the  one  central 
point  round  which  everything  else  may  be  left  to  group  itself.  It 
holds  up  to  us  a  Power:  human,  real,  demonstrable,  lovable  — 
one  that  we  can  feel  with,  and  work  for,  and  learn  to  understand, 
who  provides  for  us,  and  whose  good  we  can  promote.  It  shows 
us  something  we  can  love  and  be  proud  to  serve,  something  that 
can  stir  all  our  intellectual  efforts,  reduce  them  to  system,  something 


DEMOCRACY  AND  HUMANITY 


"3 


too  that  can  dignify  and  justify  our  best  exertions.  And  this 
something  is  the  same  for  our  whole  nature,  and  it  knits  together 
our  whole  nature  in  harmony.    It  is  always  herCj  on  earth." 

"The  theological  believers  say,  'Have  faith  and  all  things  shall 
be  added  unto  you!'  So  we  may  say,  believe  in  Humanity  (no!  it 
is  impossible  to  disbelieve  in  Humanity)  —  but  habitually  come  to 
look  at  Humanity  as  the  converging  point  of  your  whole  existence, 
thoughts,  feelings  and  labor;  and  all  other  things  may  be  con- 
sidered hereafter."  ^ 

Every  religion,  says  the  positivist,  requires  a  creed,  a 
code  and  a  cult.  Humanity  supplies  a  creed  in  agreement 
with  science,  and  requiring  no  compromise  with  the  intel- 
lect; it  also  supplies  a  code,  or  ethical  program.  The  cult 
of  positivism  is  supplied  by  a  new  hero  worship.  The 
Church  Calendar  is  the  "Calendar  of  Great  Men";  the 
saints  are  "the  prophets,  the  religious  teachers,  the  founders 
of  creeds,  of  nations  and  systems  of  life;  the  poets,  the 
thinkers,  the  artists,  kings,  warriors,  statesmen  and  rulers; 
the  inventors,  the  men  of  science  and  of  all  useful  arts." 
These  departed  heroes,  who  yet  live  in  their  works,  are  to 
be  reverently  remembered  on  the  Saint's  days  duly  ap- 
pointed for  them.2  Even  the  sacraments  may  be  retained 
in  a  new  form,  in  the  form  of  commemorative  sermons  and 
ceremonies  for  "  Infancy,  Education,  Adult  Age,  Marriage, 
Choice  of  a  Profession,  Maturity,  Burial.''  ^  In  short,  all  the 
wealth  of  socialized  emotions  that  cluster  about  religious 
observance  is  to  be  preserved;  and  is  henceforth  to  be 
evoked  only  by  objects  that  enjoy  the  unqualified  sanction 
of  science. 

Such  is  the  Religion  of  Humanity  in  its  most  explicit  and 
self-conscious  form.  But  the  Comtean  Church  is  only  a 
very  small  part  of  the  religion  of  humanity.  To  all  whom 
science  has  deprived  of  God,  and  who  yet  desire  to  retain 
the  moral  stimulus  of  religion.  Humanity  suggests  itself  as 

*  Frederic  Harrison:  The  Creed  of  a  Layman  (1907),  pp.  206,  216-218, 
226-227.  Cf.  also  Positive  Evolution  of  Religion,  Ch.  XIII,  pp.  237,  238,  241- 
242. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  340;  cf.  also  the  same  writer's  Calendar  of  Great  Men. 
'  Ibid.,  p.  52. 


h 


114 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  most  appropriate  substitute.  Even  Nietzsche  finds 
something  like  religious  inspiration  in  the  thought  that 
*^man  can  henceforth  make  of  himself  what  he  desires"; 
in  the  conviction  that  *^our  way  goes  upward  from  species 
to  super-species."  To  all  of  the  positivistic  and  sociological 
school  of  thought  this  religion  has  made  some  appeal.  Here, 
for  example,  is  a  characteristic  paragraph  from  Durkheim: 

"Since  the  human  person  is  the  only  thing  that  touches  all 
hearts,  since  its  glorification  is  the  only  end  that  can  be  collectively 
pursued,  it  cannot  fail  to  acquire  in  all  eyes  an  exceptional  impor- 
tance. It  thus  raises  itself  above  all  human  ends  and  assumes  a 
religious  character.  Such  an  individualism,  far  from  detaching 
individuals  from  society,  or  from  every  transcendent  end,  unites 
them  in  thought  and  in  the  service  of  the  same  cause."  ^ 

Frederic  Harrison,  having  been  brought  up  as  a  Church- 
man, felt  the  importance  of  cult  and  ritual.  But  this  was 
not  the  case  with  W.  K.  Clifford,  for  example.  This  writer 
has  perhaps  expressed  the  essential  inspiration  of  this  re- 
ligion more  strikingly  than  any  recent  writer: 

*'The  dim  and  shadowy  outlines  of  the  superhuman  deity  fade 
slowly  away  from  before  us;  and  as  the  mist  of  his  presence  floats 
aside,  we  perceive  with  greater  and  greater  clearness  the  shape  of 
a  yet  grander  and  nobler  figure  —  of  Him  who  made  all  Gods  and 
shall  unmake  them.  From  the  dim  dawn  of  history,  and  from  the 
inmost  depth  of  every  soul,  the  face  of  our  father  Man  looks  out 
upon  us  with  the  fire  of  eternal  youth  in  his  eyes,  and  says,  '  Before 
Jehovah  was,  I  am.'  "  ^ 

It  is  highly  significant  that  John  Stuart  Mill,  positivist 
though  he  was,  and  deeply  influenced  by  Comte,  neverthe- 
less was  apparently  little  touched  by  the  Religion  of  Hu- 
manity. His  *' Three  Essays  on  Religion  "  barely  mention 
it.  But  the  reason  is  clear.  To  MilFs  less  extravagant  and 
less  consistent  mind,  the  essence  of  religion  was  metaphysi- 
cal.    Religion  was  an  attempt  to  establish  relations  not 

*  Durkheim:  Le  Suicide,  p.  382.  Cf.  also  La  Division  du  Travail  Social ^ 
p.  396. 

*  W.  K.  Clifford,  "The  Ethics  of  Religion,"  in  Lectures  and  Essays,  Vol.  II, 
p.  243. 


DEMOCRACY  AND   HUMANITY 


115 


with  man,  but  with  the  deeper  causes  of  nature.  In  this 
even  the  Agnostic  was  to  his  mind  more  nearly  right  than 
the  Comtean.  But  Mill  did  not  think  a  temperate  mind 
need  deny  God  outright  even  on  the  evidence  of  science. 
There  was  room  for  doubt,  and  this  might  properly  be 
superseded  by  faith,  since  faith  was  humanly  so  important. 
We  have  here  another  motive,  to  which  we  shall  return 
below.  But  I  want  to  quote  a  single  paragraph,  to  illus- 
trate the  difference  between  the  positivism  of  Mill  and  that 
of  the  orthodox  Comteans: 

"It  appears  to  me  that  the  indulgence  of  hope  with  regard  to 
the  government  of  the  universe  and  the  destiny  of  man  after  death, 
while  we  recognize  as  a  clear  truth  that  we  have  no  ground  for  more 
than  a  hope,  is  legitimate  and  philosophically  defensible.  The 
beneficial  effect  of  such  a  hope  is  far  from  trifling.  It  makes  life 
and  human  nature  a  far  greater  thing  to  the  feelings,  and  gives 
greater  strength  as  well  as  solemnity  to  all  the  sentiments  awakened 
in  us  by  our  fellow-creatures  and  by  mankind  at  large.  It  allays 
the  sense  of  that  irony  in  Nature  which  is  so  painfully  felt  when  we 
see  the  exertions  and  sacrifices  of  a  life  culminating  in  the  formation 
of  a  wise  and  noble  mind,  only  to  disappear  from  the  world  when 
the  time  has  just  arrived  at  which  the  world  seems  about  to  begin 
reaping  the  benefit  of  it.  .  .  .  Impressions  such  as  these,  though  not 
in  themselves  amounting  to  what  can  properly  be  called  a  religion, 
seem  to  me  excellently  fitted  to  aid  and  fortify  that  real,  though 
purely  human  religion,  which  sometimes  calls  itself  the  Religion 
of  Humanity  and  sometimes  that  of  Duty.  To  me  it  seems  that 
human  life,  small  and  confined  as  it  is,  .  .  .  stands  greatly  in  need 
of  any  wider  range  and  greater  height  of  aspiration  for  itself  and 
its  destination,  which  the  exercise  of  the  imagination  can  yield  to 
it  without  running  counter  to  the  evidence  of  fact."  ^ 

*  Three  Essays  on  Religion,  pp.  249,  255-256,  245.    See  below,  pp.  326-330. 


CHAPTER  X 
EVOLUTIONISM:  SPENCER  AND  DARWIN 

Evolution  is  in  our  day  an  excessively  familiar  idea; 
excessively  familiar,  because,  having  been  taken  over  by 
popular  discourse,  it  has  lost  most  of  its  definiteness  of 
meaning.  Everybody  thinks  he  knows  what  it  means,  but 
scarcely  anybody  could  render  an  intelligible  account  of  it. 
The  idea  has  been  vulgarized;  and  the  first  step  in  discuss- 
ing it  must  be  to  sharpen  its  meaning. 

I.    THE  CONCEPTION   OF  EVOLUTION 

I.  The  Basal  Idea.  The  most  obvious  thing  about  the 
conception  of  evolution  is  that  it  impHes  an  interest  in  the 
historical  or  temporal  aspect  of  things.  As  characteristic 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century  it  signifies  that  in  this  century 
as  contrasted  with  the  Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth  Cen- 
turies, men  began  to  think  that  the  past  was  worth  investi- 
gating. But  this  is  evidently  insufficient.  The  interest  of 
the  antiquarian,  who  studies  the  past  because  he  finds  it 
picturesque,  or  merely  because  it  challenges  his  curiosity, 
does  not  suggest  evolution.  Nor  does  a  knowledge  of  the 
mere  sequence  of  events  imply  any  use  of  this  idea.^  One 
may  know,  for  example,  that  the  mediaeval  civilization  of 
the  Thirteenth  and  Fourteenth  Centuries  was  followed  in 
the  Fifteenth  Century  by  the  Renaissance.  But  this  does 
not  mean  that  the  latter  evolved  from  the  former.  *' Follow 
after  "  is  not  the  same  as  "evolve  from."  Teniporality  and 
sequence  are  necessary  but  evidently  not  sufiicient. 

Suppose  we  add  the  idea  of  continuity.  This  has  un- 
doubtedly played  an  important  role  in  evolutionary  thought. 
It  was  once  thought,  for  example,  that  the  crust  of  the  earth 
had  passed  through  a  series  of  cataclysmic  upheavals,  of 
sudden  and  overwhelming  catastrophes,  just  as  the  city  of 

ii6 


EVOLUTIONISM:   SPENCER  AND   DARWIN 


117 


f 


' 


i  I 


I 


San  Francisco  has  been  rebuilt  from  time  to  time  as  a 
result  of  devastating  fires.  This  view  has  been  superseded 
by  the  so-called  uniformitarian  geology  in  which  the  crust 
of  the  earth  is  conceived  as  having  been  gradually  and 
smoothly  changed  through  normal  forces,  like  erosion,  work- 
ing steadily  over  vast  periods  of  time.  This  new  geology 
with  its  emphasis  on  the  continuous  transformation  of  the 
earth's  surface,  is  a  part  of  the  general  theory  of  evolution. 
Or,  consider  the  case  of  the  animal  species.  The  old  view  was 
that  a  sort  of  zoological  garden  was  planted  by  God  in  the 
beginning,  two  of  each  distinct  variety.  And  it  was  thought 
that  these  original  species  were  not  only  absolutely  differ- 
ent, but  immutably  fixed,  each  reproducing  its  kind.  This 
old  Noah's  Ark  conception  of  animal  creation  has  been 
superseded  by  the  view  that  the  differences  between  animal 
species  are  only  accumulations  of  little  differences  of  degree. 
The  modern  zoologist  tries  to  arrange  animal  species  not  as 
a  mosaic  in  which  differences  are  heightened  by  contrast, 
but  as  a  series  in  which  each  term  shall  differ  as  slightly  as 
possible  from  those  on  either  side  of  it;  as  we  might  arrange 
men  according  to  height,  so  that  while  the  tallest  differed 
greatly  from  the  shortest,  each  differed  very  slightly,  almost 
inappreciably,  from  his  neighbors.  Perfect  continuity  would, 
of  course,  mean  more  than  this;  it  would  mean  a  flow- 
ing, unbroken  change  like  that  from  light  to  shade  in  a 
vignetted  photograph.  This  biology  has  never  achieved ;  but 
it  is  well  known  that  this  science  has  succeeded  in  interpo- 
lating little  graduated  differences  all  the  way  from  plant- 
Hke  micro-organisms  at  the  bottom  to  God-like  man  at  the 

top. 

But  even  continuity,  I  think,  is  not  the  essential  feature 
of  evolution.  If  you  had  a  body  moving  through  space  at 
a  uniform  velocity  its  changes  of  position  would  be  con- 
tinuous, more  perfectly  continuous,  perhaps,  than  any  other 
natural  phenomenon  that  can  be  imagined.  And  yet  this 
would  not  occur  to  us  as  a  good  example  of  evolution.  The 
reason  would  be,  I  think,  that  there  would  be  nothing  of 
which  we  could  properly  say  that  it  was  evolving.     In  an 


ii8 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


evolutionary  process  something  must  come  into  existence 
that  did  not  exist  before,  and  something  having  a  distinct 
individuality  of  its  own.  In  the  case  of  animal  species 
each  species  still  retains  a  certain  uniqueness  and  a  certain 
stability.  It  is  never  dissolved  wholly  into  a  fluid  process 
of  change.  It  appears,  in  other  words,  that  discontinuity 
is  scarcely  less  necessary  to  our  conception  than  continuity. 
Something  new  must  come  out  of  the  old.  We  may  provide 
for  this,  I  think,  in  some  such  way  as  the  following.  We 
may  say  that  an  evolutionary  process  is  one  in  which  indi- 
vidualities and  novelties  may  be  understood  as  successive  phases 
of  one  orderly  change.  A  thing  may  be  said  to  have  evolved 
when,  having  a  specific  character  of  its  own,  it  is  neverthe- 
less an  outgrowth  of  the  past;  when  it  can  be  understood 
as  produced  by  the  same  forces  as  those  which  produced  its 
antecedents,  and  as  coming  in  its  own  proper  turn.  Thus 
out  of  a  primitive  settlement  evolves  a  great  city.  In  all 
the  stages  of  its  growth  the  same  causes  are  at  work,  the 
strategic  location,  the  natural  advantages,  etc.  After  a 
certain  stage  of  growth  has  been  reached  it  passes  over  the 
line,  and  ceasing  to  be  an  overgrown  town  becomes  a  great 
city.  This  is  a  crucial  change  in  which  entirely  new  psy- 
chological, political  or  commercial  characteristics  appear. 
But  this  new  thing  born  into  the  world  is  to  be  explained 
none  the  less  as  the  outcome  of  the  same  forces  that  have 
been  long  at  work,  and  as  belonging  next  in  the  series  of 
changes  after  that  which  has  just  preceded. 

Now  accepting  this  as  the  general  meaning  of  evolu- 
tion (the  explanation  of  novelties  as  successive  phases  of 
one  orderly  change),  let  us  consider  its  variants,  or  the 
several  factors  by  which  different  types  of  evolution  may  be 
distinguished. 

2.  Varying  Factors.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  the  mode 
of  determination,  the  type  of  agency  or  law  by  which  the 
change  is  brought  about.  There  are  three  important  types 
of  evolution,  all  of  great  importance  in  contemporary 
thought,  and  distinguished  by  this  factor.  There  is  what 
Bergson  calls  **  creative  evolution,"  in  which  the  great  proc- 


EVOLUTIONISM :  SPENCER  AND  DARWIN 


119 


ess  of  cosmic  history  is  conceived  as  moved  by  the  free 
spontaneous  action  of  Hving  beings.  There  is  the  idealistic 
conception  of  historical  development,  originating  with  such 
philosophers  as  Hegel  and  Schelling.  According  to  this 
conception,  change  is  governed  by  ideas;  it  is  the  progres- 
sive realization  of  a  plan.  Finally  there  is  the  naturalistic 
conception,  according  to  which  change  is  due  to  the  me- 
chanical causes  recognized  in  physical  science.  This  is  the 
evolution  of  Spencer  and  Darwin,  which  I  propose  to  con- 
sider in  the  present  chapter.  The  other  types,  evolution 
by  ideal  determination  and  evolution  by  free  creation,  will 
receive  attention  later,  in  connection  with  idealism  and 

vitalism.^ 

Secondly,  evolutionary  processes  may  vary  in  direction. 
They  must  always  have  direction,  for  without  direction 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  orderly  sequence.  But  this  direc- 
tion may  be  ascending,  as  in  the  case  of  the  progressive 
complexity  of  living  organisms;  or  descending,  as  in  the 
case  of  political  degeneration  as  described  by  Plato.  Or  it 
may  be  horizontal  as  in  the  case  of  a  musical  melody  in  which 
the  end  is  neither  more  nor  less  significant  than  the  begin- 
ning. Or  the  direction  may  be  zigzag  as  in  the  case  of 
development  through  the  alternative  triumph  of  opposing 
forces.  Or,  finally,  the  direction  may  be  circular,  as  in  the 
case  of  the  world-cycles  of  the  ancient  thinkers,  or  the 
Eternal  Recurrence  of  Nietzsche.- 

A  third  and  very  important  varying  factor  is  the  relation 
of  the  evolutionary  process  to  value.  The  modern  mind  has 
been  almost  hopelessly  confused  in  this  matter.  There  is  a 
vulgar  idea  that  if  only  you  can  stand  things  up  in  a  row, 
and  then  pass  along  the  row  from  one  end  to  the  other,  the 
first  must  be  the  worst  and  the  last  the  best.  This  idea  is 
largely  responsible  for  the  vaguely  eulogistic  associations 
which  the  term  evolution  has  acquired.  It  has  been  widely 
supposed  that  since  science  has  established  the  fact  of  evo- 
lution,  the  world  is  therefore  growing  better  and  man's 

1  Cf.  below,  pp.  278-280:  345-347- 

2  Cf.  below,  p.  164. 


120 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


religious  hopes  are  justified.  There  is  something  of  this 
shallowness  in  John  Fiske's  Through  Nature  to  God,  and  in 
Tennyson's  ''far-off  divine  event  toward  which  the  whole 

creation  moves/'  ^ 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  granting  that  the  creation  is  moving 
toward  some  far-off  event,  it  does  not  in  the  least  follow 
that  the  event  has  anything  divine  about  it.  So  far  as  the 
principle  of  evolution  is  concerned  it  might  equally  well  be 
a  Gbtterddmmerung,  or  end  of  the  world.  Indeed  that  far-off 
event  which  is  most  widely  proclaimed  by  science  is  a  con- 
dition of  cosmic  prostration  in  which,  all  energies  having 
been  dissipated  in  the  form  of  heat,  neither  life  nor  any  kind 
of  mechanical  work  will  longer  be  possible.  The  evolu- 
tionary process  may  be  a  change  for  the  better,  or  it  may  be 
a  change  for  the  worse,  or  it  may  be  quite  indifferent  in  re- 
lation to  values.  Even  progressive  adaptation  may  signify 
a  decline  in  value,  under  conditions  in  which  the  environ- 
ment is  increasingly  unfavorable  to  the  more  delicately  or- 
ganized forms  of  life.  Disease,  old  age  or  death  may  be 
said  to  evolve  as  truly  as  health  and  life.  Chaos  may 
evolve  out  of  order  as  well  as  order  out  of  chaos.  In  other 
words  evolution  in  itself  impHes  nothing  as  to  value.  In 
principle  it  lends  support  neither  to  a  pessimistic  nor  to 
an  optimistic  view  of  history. 

Finally,  conceptions  of  evolution  may  vary  as  to  scope, 
Spencer's  conception  is  a  cosmic  generalization,  a  law  con- 
ceived to  hold  universally;  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  con- 
ceptions of  Aristotle  and  Hegel.  Darwin's  conception,  on 
the  other  hand,  was  a  strictly  biological  conception.  It 
has,  to  be  sure,  been  loosely  generalized  by  posterity;^  but 
with  its  author  it  was  a  vigorously  verified  hypothesis  within 
the  field  of  a  special  science. 

In  what  follows  here,  we  are  to  confine  ourselves  to  riatur- 
alistic  conceptions  of  evolution,  in  which  the  process  is  de- 
termined by  mechanical  forces;  and  to  two  instances  of  this 

1  Cf.  also  David  Strauss,  The  Old  FaUh  and  the  New.  For  a  criticism  of 
Evolutionism  on  grounds  similar  to  those  taken  by  the  present  writer,  cf. 
B.  Russell,  Kmrwledge  of  the  External  World.  Lect.  I,  and  below,  pp   346.  347- 


EVOLUTIONISM:  SPENCER  AND   DARWIN 


121 


i 


f 


/   I 


type,  the  cosmic  generalization  of  Spencer,  and  the  biological 
hypothesis  of  Darwin.  We  shall  be  mainly  interested  in 
discovering  what  spiritual  incentives  or  ground  for  hope 
these  conceptions  have  suggested  to  the  modern  world. 

n.    THE  SPENCERIAN  ETHICS   OF   EVOLUTION 

I.  The  General  Law.  Spencer  called  his  philosophy  the 
"Synthetic  Philosophy,"  thus  calling  attention  to  that 
feature  of  it  which  most  impressed  his  age,  and  which  is 
the  author^s  chief  title  to  fame.  When  Spencer  wrote,  evi- 
dence had  long  been  accumulating  to  show  that  the  different 
departments  of  nature  or  fields  of  science  were  only  arti- 
ficially bounded.  Physical  chemistry,  organic  chemistry, 
physiological  psychology,  psychological  sociology  and  the 
other  hyphenated  sciences  to  which  attention  has  been 
called,  had  already  proved  the  continuity  of  physical  proc- 
esses. The  great  generalizations  of  science  such  as  the 
Conservation  of  Energy  and  the  Conservation  of  Matter, 
generalizations  which  were  not  the  property  of  any  one 
science,  emphasized  the  homogeneity  of  the  physical  world. 
The  idea  of  the  mutation  of  species  had  discredited  the  idea  of 
special  creation  as  a  means  of  accounting  for  living  organisms. 
Anthropology  had  brought  to  light  the  stages  of  human 
development  from  primitive  beginnings,  in  which  the  differ- 
ence between  man  and  the  brute  was  no  longer  as  absolute 
and  irreducible  as  had  once  appeared.  Man  had  learned 
enough  about  his  own  past  to  suspect  his  humble  origin. 
He  was  prepared  to  believe  that  instead  of  coming  into  the 
world  "trailing  clouds  of  glory  from  Heaven,"  he  might 
perhaps  be  soiled  with  ancestral  slime.  And  though  this 
was  a  less  flattering  genealogy  there  was  consolation  in  the 
thought  that  with  such  an  origin  he  had  nevertheless  gone 
so  far.  In  the  very  baseness  of  his  origin  there  was  proof 
of  man's  power  to  make  of  himself  what  he  would.  If  to 
look  back  was  to  look  down,  then  to  look  forward  was  to 
look  up. 

Spencer  found  ready  at  hand  the  materials  for  a  new 
synthetic  view  of  the  world  and  of  man.    With  a  versa- 


122 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


tility  and  erudition  that  give  him  a  place  beside  Aristotle, 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  Leibniz  and  Hegel  as  one  of  the  great 
encyclopedic  minds,  he  compassed  the  whole  range  of  human 
knowledge.  Astronomy,  physics,  chemistry,  biology,  psy- 
chology, sociology,  each  science  contributed  its  part.  Each 
took  up  the  tale  where  the  other  left  ojff,  until  the  whole 
story  of  the  physical  cosmos  was  unfolded,  from  the  first 
primeval  nebula  to  the  future  perfected  society  of  man. 

But  Spencer  did  not  merely  piece  the  several  sciences 
together  to  cover  the  whole  extent  of  nature.  He  found, 
or  thought  he  found,  a  common  theme,  a  law  of  laws,  by 
which  all  nature  might  be  viewed  as  a  single  orderly  process. 
This  great  cosmic  law  he  expressed  as  follows: 

"Evolution  is  an  integration  of  matter  and  concomitant  dissipa- 
tion of  motion;  during  which  the  matter  passes  from  an  indefinite, 
incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite,  coherent  heterogeneity; 
and  during  which  the  retained  motion  undergoes  parallel  trans- 
formation." ^ 

The  clearest  and  most  spectacular  instance  of  this  is  the 
transformation  of  the  celestial  world  from  an  indefinite 
incoherent,  homogeneous  nebula,  widely  diffused  through 
space,  to  a  system  of  concentrated  stellar  masses.  But  we 
shall  confine  our  attention  here  to  the  application  to  human 
society. 

2.  Ideal  Conduct  in  the  Evolved  Society.  Society,  like 
celestial  matter,  evolves  in  the  direction  of  differentiation 
and  inter-adjustment.  When  one  compares  a  relatively 
primitive  society  of  the  pastoral  type  with  a  modern  civi- 
lized nation  it  appears  that  in  the  former  all  men  are  more 
or  less  aUke  and  only  loosely  aggregated,  while  in  the  latter 
there  are  all  kinds  of  different  stations  and  occupations 
closely  interconnected.  Social  evolution,  then,  is  in  the 
direction  of  diversification  and  organization.  In  the  com- 
pletely evolved  society  there  will  be  as  many  kinds  of 
people  as  possible,  each  with  as  many  interests  as  possible, 
but  all  living  in  perfect  harmony  together.     Jack  Sprat  and 

1  First  Principles,  Chap.  XVIII. 


EVOLUTIONISM:  SPENCER  AND   DARWIN 


123 


his  wife  found  a  way  by  which  their  two  individualities 
could  be  preserved  without  friction.  So  mankind,  more  and 
more  of  them,  and  with  interests  more  and  more  diversified, 
come  to  learn  better  and  better  how  to  live  together. 

"From  the  laws  of  life  it  must  be  concluded  that  unceasing 
social  discipline  will  so  mould  human  nature,  that  eventually 
sympathetic  pleasures  will  be  spontaneously  pursued  to  the  fullest 
extent  advantageous  to  each  and  all.  The  scope  for  altruistic 
activities  will  not  exceed  the  desire  for  altruistic  satisfactions." 

"One  who' has  followed  the  general  argument  thus  far,  will  not 
deny  that  an  ideal  social  being  may  be  conceived  as  so  constituted 
that  his  spontaneous  activities  are  congruous  with  the  conditions 
imposed  by  the  social  environment  formed  by  other  such  beings."^ 

Thus  in  the  evolved  society  all  classes,  creeds,  races, 
opinions,  ambitions,  passions,  temperaments  and  tastes 
will  form  one  great  amicable  and  happy  family  together. 
Each  while  doing  what  he  most  wants  to  do,  will  have 
become  so  attuned  to  the  rest  that  in  doing  it  he  will  never 
step  on  anybody  else's  toes  or  jostle  his  neighbor  with  his 
elbow.  Indeed,  what  he  does  for  himself  and  in  his  own 
way  will  positively  promote  every  interest  which  it  affects, 
as  the  indulgent  mother  will  please  her  child  by  the  same 
act  with  which  she  ministers  to  her  own  pleasure.  It  is 
more  than  external  adjustment  reached  by  a  set  of  prohi- 
bitions. That  would  be  mere  justice,  the  rough  preHminary 
socializing  that  can  be  accomplished  by  the  force  of  the  state. 
True  sociality  is  an  affair  of  inner  feelings  and  impulses, 
these  being  gradually  cultivated  or  modified  until  they  are 
in  entire  harmony. 

Absolutely  right  conduct,  then,  is  such  conduct  as  is  found 
in  a  completely  evolved  society.  Such  conduct  is  impos- 
sible at  the  present  stage  of  human  development,  but  it  is 
approximated  in  time  of  peace  in  the  internal  life  of  an 
advanced  modern  society.  The  international  relations  of 
men  are  still  discordant,  and  the  foreign  policy  of  nations 
has  to  be  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  a  military  age.  But 
the  law  of  evolution  implies  that  in  due  time  nations  will 

*  H,  Spencer:  Data  of  Ethics,  pp.  250,  274. 


124 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


leam  to  live  together  as  amicably  as  individuals  of   the 

same  society.  ... 

But  as  Spencer  clearly  recognizes,  an  evolved  soaety  is 
not  necessarily  good.  The  one  thing  does  not  necessarily 
follow  from  the  other.  In  what  sense  is  social  evolution  a 
process  of  improvement  or  betterment? 

It  is  important  to  remark  that  while  Spencer  recognizes 
that  organization  and  harmony  are  conditions  of  a  society's 
survival,  he  does  not  value  them  on  that  account.  That 
which  tends  to  endure  and  survive  is  the  integrated  form  of 
life,  which  as  it  happens  is  good.  But  it  is  not  good  because 
it  survives.  I  call  attention  to  this  point  because  Spencer 
is  here  expressly  in  disagreement  with  those  evolutionists, 
commonly  of  Darwinian  persuasion,  who  find  in  the  fact 
that  a  society  exists  when  others  have  perished,  a  proof  of 
its  superiority.  For  Spencer  the  goodness  of  the  evolved 
type  of  society  is  asserted  on  quite  other  grounds.  The 
evolved  society  is  good  because  it  represents  a  maximum  of 
life  in  length,  in  breadth  or  numbers,  and  in  completeness, 
richness  or  variety.  In  other  words,  life  is  good;  and  hence 
the  more  of  it  the  better.  But  why  is  Hfe  good?  We  are 
not  yet  at  the  bottom  of  the  argument!  Life  is  good  be- 
cause it  is  pleasant;  and  pleasure  is  good  in  the  last  and 
fundamental  sense.  So  Spencer  belongs  to  the  hedonistic 
school,  which  proclaims  that  pleasure  is  the  only  thing 
intrinsically  good,  and  pain  the  only  thing  intrinsically  evil. 
And  he  offers  an  expressly  optimistic  interpretation  of  his- 
tory. Having  on  the  one  hand  a  conception  of  the  evolu- 
tionary process  of  nature,  and  on  the  other  hand  an  inde- 
pendent conception  of  good,  he  is  led  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  actual  course  of  the  evolutionary  process  is  such  as  to 
conduce  to  more  and  more  of  good. 

We  have  now  to  consider  another  aspect  of  the  Spence- 
rian  ethics  that  has  played  an  important  part  in  contempo- 
rary social  and  political  philosophy. 

3.  Natural  Reactions  and  Laissez-faire.  Spencer^  is 
known  as  one  of  the  great  apostles  of  individualism,  against 
centralization  and  state-action.     On  this  ground,  for  ex- 


EVOLUTIONISM:  SPENCER  AND   DARWIN 


125 


ample,  he  stoutly  opposed  socialism.  Let  us  see  if  we  can 
connect  this  with  the  fundamental  doctrines  already  de- 
scribed. Human  evolution,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the  result 
of  **  unceasing  social  discipline.''  By  social  discipline 
Spencer  means  learning  by  social  experience;  learning  how 
to  live  with  others  by  trying  this  or  that  mode  of  action  and 
experiencing  the  consequences.  If  a  man  is  brutally  in- 
different to  the  susceptibilities  of  others  he  soon  discovers 
that  others  avoid  him,  and  that  he  suffers  in  all  his  affairs 
by  isolation.  So  he  tries  some  other  course  of  action  until 
he  has  acquired  the  sort  of  disposition  that  fits  him  better 
to  a  social  environment.  But  to  learn  by  experience,  the 
consequences  of  one's  action  must  be  allowed  to  take  their 
course.  If  the  rude  individual  above  referred  to  were  to 
have  the  effects  of  his  rudeness  obscured  or  offset  by  the 
eager  attentions  of  some  doting  friend  or  relative,  he  would 
never  learn  better.  The  same  would  be  the  case  if  for  the 
direct  effects  of  his  action  a  teacher  were  to  substitute  some 
artificial  penalty.  A  tardy  boy  who  is  compelled  to  stand 
in  the  corner  or  write  out  the  word  "Constantinople" 
three  hundred  and  fifty  times,  learns  nothing  about  the 
social  effects  of  tardiness.  He  should  be  allowed  to  miss 
something.  That  is  what  happens  in  the  long  run  to  the 
man  who  is  late.  This  is  what  Spencer  calls  the  principle 
of  *' natural  reactions,"  the  principle  on  which  he  bases  his 
theory  of  education.  "Each  individual,"  he  says,  "is  to 
receive  the  benefit  and  evils  of  his  own  nature  and  conse- 
quent conduct."  The  "normal  relations  between  conducts 
and  consequent"  must  be  left  so  far  as  possible  undisturbed.* 
This  social  discipline,  according  to  Spencer,  goes  on  from 
generation  to  generation,  each  inheriting  the  lessons  already 
learnt  and  learning  new  ones  of  its  own.^  And  in  order  to 
make  it  possible,  men  must  so  far  as  possible  be  let  alone. 
The  wise  state  like  the  wise  parent  will  not  coddle  its  chil- 
dren, but  let  them  find  out  the  ways  of  the  world  for  them- 

*  Justice,  pp.  17,  19. 

*  In  other  words,  Spencer  adopts  the  now  generally  abandoned  doctrine  of 
the  "inheritance  of  acquired  characters." 


126 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


selves;  and  build  what  they  learn  into  their  very  systems  in 
the  form  of  indelible  memories,  durable  habits  and  acquired 
aptitudes. 

So  the  political  and  economic  doctrine  of  laissez-faire  is 
consistent  with  the  whole  drift  of  the  Spencerian  philos- 
ophy. The  state  should  confine  itself  to  the  enforcement  of 
justice,  which  Spencer  defines  as  follows: 

"Those  actions  through  which,  in  fulfilment  of  its  nature,  the 
individual  achieves  benefits  and  avoids  evils,  shall  be  restrained  by 
the  need  for  non-interference  with  the  like  actions  of  associated 
individuals.  .  .  .  Every  man  is  free  to  do  that  which  he  wills,  pro- 
vided he  infringes  not  the  equal  freedom  of  any  other  man."  i 

Justice  in  itself  is  insufficient;  beneficence  also  is  needed 
in  order  to  realize  the  possibilities  of  life  to  the  full.  But 
beneficence  is  a  private  and  not  a  public  concern. 

Spencer's  acceptance  of  the  laissez-faire  theory,  his  desire 
narrowly  to  restrict  the  functions  of  the  state,  is,  then,  con- 
nected fundamentally  and  logically  with  his  theory  that 
human  evolution  is  a  process  of  education,  of  readjustment 
and  reformation  upon  the  basis  of  individual  experience. 
But  other  motives. confirmed  this  primary  motive.  Thus 
he  believed,  as  Nietzsche  did  not,  that  evolution  was  a 
natural  law,  and  that  it  would  therefore  take  place  of  itself, 
without  human  interference.  He  believed,  as  so  many  of 
his  time  believed,  in  the  sure  beneficence  of  the  competi- 
tive principle  in  economic  Hfe;  in  a  sort  of  providence  by 
which  private  self-seeking  would  bid  for  public  favor  and 
•cater  to  the  public  interest.  Spencer  lived  before  the  growth 
of  great  corporate,  centralized  industries  had  rendered  an 
appeal  to  the  state  imperative.  Finally,  he  was  an  English- 
man, with  the  Englishman's  inveterate  dislike  of  being  inter- 
fered with;  and  with  the  Englishman's  confidence  in  the 
power  of  the  individual,  if  let  alone,  to  find  his  way  by 
himself. 

*  Op.  cit.,  pp.  15,  46. 


EVOLUTIONISM:   SPENCER   AND   DARWIN 


III.    DARWINISM  VERSUS   ETHICS 


127 


I.  The  Darwinian  Ideas.  Charles  Darwin's  epoch-mak- 
ing Origin  of  Species  was  published  in  1859.  It  was  pri- 
marily a  biological  treatise;  and  though  its  central  ideas 
have  since  been  widely  applied,  it  has  owed  its  great  influ- 
ence largely  to  its  strictly  scientific  origin.  It  was  Darwin's 
**  theory  of  natural  selection,"  said  Huxley,  'Hhat  was  the 
actual  flash  of  light."  He  meant  that  it  was  Darwin  who 
first  exhibited  the  mechanism  of  evolution.  Hitherto  evo- 
lution had  been  a  speculation,  an  inspiration,  or  an  empirical 
generalization.  Darwin  was  a  scientist  of  the  most  patient 
and  rigorous  type,  and  through  him  evolution  became  an 
accredited  scientific  achievement.  He  was  able  to  lay  bare 
by  analysis  and  experimentation  the  important  factors  and 
causes  by  which  the  process  of  biological  evolution  was 
actually  determined.  Thus  launched  under  the  patronage 
and  with  the  credentials  of  science,  the  Darwinian  ideas  have 
retained,  despite  their  popularization  and  more  or  less  ille- 
gitimate extension  and  modification,  a  certain  flavor  of 
intellectual  austerity. 

The  fundamental  conceptions  of  Darwinism  are  briefly 
as  follows.  In  the  reproductive  process  nature  is  prodigal 
of  life,  bringing  into  existence  more  individuals  than  there 
is  room  or  supply  for.  In  any  generation  of  the  given 
species  there  will  be,  over  and  above  the  general  hereditary 
similarity,  certain  slight  individual  '^variations,"  due  to 
unknown  causes  connected  with  reproduction.  Each  of  the 
individuals  will  seek  to  maintain  itself,  and  since  the  oppor- 
tunity is  limited  there  will  be  competition.  In  this  com- 
petition some  of  the  variations  will  prove  advantageous  and 
others  disadvantageous;  and  under  the  pressure  of  the 
struggle  a  handicap  proves  fatal.  Those  who  survive  the 
struggle  and  grow  to  maturity  will  be  those  individuals 
whose  variations  were  *' favorable"  or  which  rendered  their 
possessors  relatively  *'fit"  to  meet  the  peculiar  conditions 
imposed  by  the  environment.  The  relatively  unfit  will  not 
live  to  maturity;   so  that  the  next  generation  will  be  bred 


\ 


128 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


exclusively  from  the  relatively  fit,  and  will  inherit  those 
favorable  variations  which  enabled  the  parent  organisms 
to  survive.  With  this  favorable  start  in  life  the  new  gen- 
eration will  again  reveal  individual  variations,  from  which 
the  most  favorable  will  again  be  selected,  the  third  genera- 
tion thus  inheriting  the  fitness  of  the  first  and  second  gen- 
erations combined.  And  so  fitness  will  go  on  accumulating 
from  generation  to  generation  until  new  and  more  complex 
species  arise. 

Several  points  require  special  emphasis.  Evolution  in 
Darwin's  sense  is  a  more  or  less  mechanical  phenomenon, 
in  the  sense  of  being  due  to  a  concatenation  of  circum- 
stances, rather  than  to  design.  That  which  is  selected  is  a 
capacity  and  suitability  strictly  relative  to  the  conditions 
of  life  which  the  struggling  organism  is  called  on  to  meet. 
The  relatively  unfit  are  eliminated  altogether.  Their  strain 
absolutely  comes  to  an  end,  since  they  never  reach  maturity. 
The  only  characters  which  are  inherited  in  addition  to  the 
hereditary  characters  of  the  stock  are  the  *^  variations." 
Whatever  improvement  is  made  by  the  individual  within 
his  life- time  is  lost  to  the  race;  except  in  so  far  as  it  may 
form  a  part  of  the  educative  process.  The  result  is  that 
according  to  this  teaching  the  improvement  of  the  race, 
its  native  aptitude  and  capacity  for  life,  is  entirely  depend- 
ent on  a  struggle  "to  the  finish"  —  an  irreconcilable  conflict 
in  which  strength  is  cruel,  and  weakness  fatal. 

2.  Civilization  versus  the  State  of  Nature.  Here,  then, 
is  a  self-consistent  mode  of  life.  Each  unit  presses  its  own 
claims  against  its  competitors,  and  to  the  full  measure  of 
its  ability.  It  presses  its  own  advantages  quite  relentlessly 
with  the  result  that  the  best  equipped  get  everything,  even 
life  and  the  chance  of  offspring.  This  is  offered  by  Darwin 
as  an  account  of  what  actually  takes  place.  What  estimate 
shall  be  put  upon  it?  How  shall  it  be  judged?  At  this 
point  there  diverge  two  sharply  opposing  views.  There  is 
the  view  that  condemns  it  as  the  very  antithesis  of  right 
conduct;  and  there  is  the  view  that  accepts  it  as  the  ulti- 
mate standard  of  all  values. 


EVOLUTIONISM:  SPENCER  AND  DARWIN 


129 


The  first  of  these  views,  which  is  the  common  view,  is 
best  represented  by  Huxley.  This  writer  accepts  the  ortho- 
dox moral  code,  that  which  is  supported  by  the  general 
conscience  of  European  mankind,  as  the  basis  of  the  state 
of  civilization.  Civilization  thus  construed  is  the  .very  an- 
tithesis of  the  Darwinian  mode  of  life  which  he  calls  the 
*' state  of  nature." 

The  difference  lies  partly  in  the  relative  power  of  life  and 
its  environment.  In  the  state  of  nature,  represented  by 
the  natural  or  wild  vegetation  of  any  region,  the  environ- 
ment dictates  what  forms  of  Hfe  shall  obtain  a  footing. 
The  only  rivalry  is  to  secure  the  favor  of  the  environment. 
Life  is  submissive.  In  civilized  life,  such  as  horticulture,  on 
the  other  hand,  life  is  imposed  upon  the  environment. 

**The  tendency  of  the  cosmic  process  is  to  bring  about  the 
adjustment  of  the  forms  of  plant  life  to  the  current  conditions;  the 
tendency  of  the  horticulture  process  is  the  adjustment  of  the  con- 
ditions to  the  needs  of  the  forms  of  plant  life  which  the  gardener 
desires  to  raise."  ^ 

But  a  more  important  difference  between  the  cosmic  or 
natural  process,  and  the  ethical  or  artificial  process,  appears 
in  the  elimination  of  struggle. 

''Man,  the  animal  ...  has  worked  his  way  to  the  headship  of 
the  sentient  worid,  and  has  become  the  superb  animal  which  he 
is,  in  virtue  of  his  success  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  ...  For 
his  successful  progress,  throughout  the  savage  state  man  has  been 
largely  indebted  to  those  qualities  which  he  shares  with  the  ape 
and  tiger;  his  exceptional  physical  organization;  his  cunning,  his 
sociability,  his  curiosity,  and  his  imitativeness;  his  ruthless  and 
ferocious  destructiveness  when  his  anger  is  aroused  by  opposition. 
But,  in  proportion  as  men  have  passed  from  anarchy  to  social 
organization,  and  in  proportion  as  civilization  has  grown  in  worth, 
these  deeply  ingrained  serviceable  qualities  have  become  defects. 
After  the  manner  of  successful  persons,  civilized  man  would  gladly 
kick  down  the  ladder  by  which  he  has  climbed.  He  would  be.only 
too  glad  to  see  'the  ape  and  tiger  die.'  "2 

*  T.  H.  Huxley:  Evolution  and  Ethics  and  other  Essays ^  p.  13. 
2  Op.  cit.,  pp.  51-53. 


130 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


The  ethical  code  is  expressly  directed  against  the  state  of 
nature;  and  does,  in  so  far  as  obeyed,  actually  bring  the 
process  of  natural  selection  to  an  end. 

"As  I  have  already  urged,  the  practice  of  that  which  is  ethically 
best  —  what  we  call  goodness  or  virtue  —  involves  a  course  of 
conduct  which,  in  all  respects,  is  opposed  to  that  which  leads  to 
success  in  the  cosmic  struggle  for  existence.  In  place  of  ruthless 
self-assertion  it  demands  self-restraint;  in  place  of  thrusting  aside, 
or  treading  down,  all  competitors,  it  requires  that  the  individual 
shall  not  merely  respect,  but  shall  help  his  fellows;  its  influence  is 
directed,  not  so  much  to  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  as  to  the  fitting 
of  as  many  as  possible  to  survive.  It  repudiates  the  gladiatorial 
theory  of  existence.  .  .  .  Laws  and  moral  precepts  are  directed  to 
the  end  of  curbing  the  cosmic  process  and  reminding  the  individual 
of  his  duty  to  the  community,  to  the  protection  and  influence  of 
which  he  owes,  if  not  existence  itself,  at  least  the  life  of  something 
better  than  a  brutal  savage."  ^ 

There  are  sundry  grounds  on  which  Huxley's  view  of  the 
matter  may  be  criticized.  One  may  object  to  his  view  that 
the  code  of  civilization  is  essentially  artificial,  and  show  that 
the  contrast  is  overdrawn.  Even  in  its  earliest  stages  life 
is  constructive  and  not  merely  submissive.  Indeed  the  very 
principle  of  self-assertion  which  underlies  struggle  shows 
that  life  at  all  times  seeks  to  bring  the  environment  into 
conformity  with  its  own  needs.  Huxley  also  overstates  his 
case  in  claiming  unqualifiedly  that  natural  Hfe  is  ruthlessly 
self-assertive.  Combination  or  union,  involving  restraint, 
is  present  from  the  beginning,  at  least  wherever  the  young 
are  cared  for  by  their  elders;  or  wherever  there  exists,  as 
among  gregarious  animals,  any  form  of  group  solidarity. 

But,  I  wish  here  to  emphasize  rather  the  fact  that  Huxley 
is  a  moral  dogmatist,  that  he  accepts  the  existing  ethical 
code  unquestioningly.  Nietzsche,  for  example,  would  not 
so  much  deny  the  antithesis,  as  assert  that  on  higher  ra- 
tional grounds  the  principles  of  the  state  of  nature  are 
superior  to  those  of  European  civilization.  He  would  pro- 
pose to  overthrow  established  morals  in  the  name  of  a  higher 

»*  Ibid.,  pp.  81-82. 


EVOLUTIONISM:  SPENCER  AND  DARWIN 


131 


morals.  And  so  with  all  of  those  who  adopt  a  distinctly 
Darwinian  ethics.  They  do  not  judge  Darwinism  by  old 
standards  of  good  and  right;  but  on  the  contrary  propose 
to  derive  from  Darwinism  new  and  more  advanced  ideas 
as  to  what  good  and  right  really  mean. 


1 


THE  ETHICS  OF  DARWINISM 


133 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  ETHICS   OF  DARWINISM 

I.  THE  DARWINIAN  THEORY  OF  PROGRESS 

I.  CivUization  and  Degeneration.  It  is  agreed  by  Dar- 
winians and  anti-Darwinians  that  the  humanitarian  code 
in  some  measure  thwarts  the  operation  of  the  law  of  natural 
selection.  The  operation  of  this  law  requires  that  the  strong 
man  shall  exult  in  his  strength  and  make  the  most  of  it; 
while  the  weak  man  shall  pay  the  penalty  of  his  weakness 
and  be  crowded  out.  According  to  the  humanitarian  code, 
however,  the  strong  man  is  to  divide  his  strength  with  those 
who  are  less  fortunate,  and  the  weak  are  to  be  the  objects 
of  a  special  soUcitude  and  protecting  care  on  the  part  of 
society  as  a  whole.  Thus,  whereas  in  the  state  of  nature 
the  race  is  recruited  only  from  the  strong,  since  they  alone 
reproduce  themselves,  in  a  humanitarian  society  the  weak, 
through  receiving  special  indulgence,  may  be  as  long-hved 
and  fertile  as  the  strong. 

While  both  concede  the  general  fact  just  stated,  the 
Darwinian  and  anti-Darwinian  will  judge  the  fact  quite 
differently.  The  anti-Darwinian  will  say  that  a  society  of 
brotherly  love  and  mutual  helpfulness  is  good  in  itself,  bet- 
ter far  than  a  society  of  superb  physical  specimens  who  are 
governed  by  the  instincts  of  the  brute.  The  anti-Darwin- 
ian, furthermore,  will  attach  great  importance  to  education. 
The  weak,  he  thinks,  may  not  only  be  saved,  but  they  may 
be  made  strong;  if  not  physically,  then  in  those  mental  and 
moral  aptitudes  which  fit  a  man  for  life  in  a  civilized  society. 
Thus  even  the  blind  or  the  deaf  mutes  may  be  shaped  so  as 
to  fit  in  somewhere  in  the  highly  diversified  modern  indus- 
trial system.  Spencer,  as  we  have  seen,  believed  that  the 
effects  of  education  could  be  transmitted  so  that  every 
increase  of  fitness  thus  achieved  was  a  permanent  gain  for 

132 


the  race.  Those  anti-Darwinians  who  feel  compelled  by  the 
trend  of  modern  biology  to  deny  the  inheritance  of  acquired 
characters,  and  who  therefore  acknowledge  that  the  work 
of  education  must  be  done  over  again  for  every  generation, 
find  a  compensating  consideration  in  the  importance  and 
permanence  of  the  social  environment.  There  all  social 
advances  may  be  preserved  and  accumulated.  If,  for  ex- 
ample, a  bHnd  man  learns  a  trade  his  children  are  not  born 
with  any  increased  aptitude  for  that  trade.  But  they  are 
born  into  a  family  and  community  in  which  the  blind  find 
useful  employment;  and  if  they  be  unfortunate  enough  to 
inherit  the  parent's  affliction,  the  way  will  have  been  made 
easier  for  them  by  his  example  and  success. 

The  Darwinians  on  the  other  hand  insist  that  education 
can  only  palHate  hereditary  weakness;  and  that  in  extreme 
cases  it  can  do  nothing  at  all.  The  big  fact  in  life,  according 
to  this  view,  is  that  some  men  are  born  fit,  healthy,  strong, 
*'just  built  for  this  world";  whereas  others  are  defective 
and  out  of  their  element.  The  difference  is  not  in  the  least 
due  to  education.  It  is  due  to  heredity,  and  to  those  mys- 
terious little  variations  which  arise  in  the  course  of  repro- 
duction. Those  who  are  born  fit  should,  then,  be  the  ones 
to  reproduce  themselves,  so  that  their  fitness  may  be  in- 
herited. This  can  be  brought  about  only  by  allowing  this 
fitness  to  enjoy  its  natural  advantages,  and  so  to  dispossess 
and  exterminate  unfitness. 

Just  so  far  as  this  natural  superiority  of  the  fit  to  the  unfit 
is  interfered  with,  the  race  will  deteriorate.  Suppose,  for 
example,  that  we  imagine  a  society  like  the  evolved  society 
of  Spencer,  in  which  the  struggle  is  entirely  eliminated 
through  a  perfect  adjustment  of  men's  altruistic  and  selfish 
impulses.  Strong  men  will  predominate  as  a  result  of  an- 
cestral elimination  in  the  rougher  days  of  uncivilized  struggle. 
But  now  the  strong  are  also  merciful.  At  first  there  will  be 
just  enough  weakness  in  such  a  society  to  gratify  the  kindly 
indulgence  of  the  strong.  The  second  generation,  however, 
will  be  recruited  both  from  the  weak  and  the  strong,  and  all 
will  survive.    The  proportion  of  the  weak  to  the  strong  will 


134 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE  ETHICS  OF  DARWINISM 


135 


then  steadily  increase  as  variations  accumulate  and  are 
preserved  quite  indiscriminately.  There  will  be  no  prin- 
ciple at  work  to  connect  survival  with  native  aptitude.  In 
other  words  the  surviving  types  will  be  determined  by 
accident  and  will  steadily  lose  that  initial  adaptation  which 
was  inherited  from  the  age  of  struggle. 

Benjamin  Kidd,  speaking  of  Spencer^s  ideal  society,  has 
expressed  this  idea  as  follows: 

''The  evolutionist  who  has  once  realized  the  significance  of  the 
supreme  fact  up  to  which  biology  has  slowly  advanced,  —  namely, 
that  every  quality  of  life  can  be  kept  in  a  state  of  efficiency  and 
prevented  from  retrograding  only  by  the  continued  and  never- 
relaxed  stress  of  selection  —  simply  finds  it  impossible  to  conceive 
a  society  permanently  existing  in  this  state.  We  can  only  think 
of  it  existing  at  all  on  one  condition  —  in  the  first  stage  of  a  period 
of  progressive  degeneration.''  ^ 

What,  then,  is  the  Darwinian  going  to  do  about  it?  If 
he  is  a  pessimist  he  will  say  that  since  civilization  has  once 
and  for  all  brought  to  an  end  the  beneficent  reign  of  natural 
selection,  such  degeneration  is  inevitable;  and  he  will  point 
for  proof  to  the  growth  of  hereditary  alcoholism,  feeble- 
mindedness, crime  and  neurasthenia. 

But  there  is  another  school  of  more  hopeful  Darwinians 
who  say  that  since  natural  selection  has  permanently  ceased 
to  operate  among  individuals  within  the  same  social  group, 
it  must  be  replaced  by  artificial  selection.  The  state  must 
see  to  it  that  while  the  weak  are  protected  and  cared  for 
they  are  not  allowed  to  reproduce  and  so  transmit  their 
weakness  to  posterity.  This  is  the  teaching  of  "eugenics," 
a  by-product  of  Darwinism.  In  its  negative  application, 
the  segregation  or  sterilization  of  the  feeble-minded  and 
criminally  insane,  and  the  requirement  of  medical  certifi- 
cates for  marriage,  this  idea  has  already  been  widely  adopted. 
This  negative  application,  which  a  contemporary  patholo- 
gist has  proposed  to  call  *'kakogenics,"  is  a  measure  of  pre- 
vention, merely.  The  positive  application,  boldly  proposed 
by  Plato  over  two  thousand  years  ago,  would  involve  the 

*  Social  Evolution,  pp.  313-314. 


systematic  improvement  of  the  race  by  selective  mating 
and  breeding.  Such  a  policy  is  too  repugnant  to  the  senti- 
ments which  in  the  present  age  attach  to  love  and  marriage 
to  receive  any  favorable  consideration.  But  it  is  interest- 
ing and  illuminating  here  because  of  its  logical  connection 
with  Darwinism.      £:  ■ 

Such,  then,  is  the  attitude  of  Darwinians  who  regard  the 
good  old  days  of  natural  selection  as  gone  forever.^  But 
there  are  more  Darwinians  who  believe  that  while  in  the 
strict  biological  sense  natural  selection  can  no  longer  take 
place,  it  does  nevertheless  continue  to  operate  in  a  broader 
and  modified  sense.  And  they  believe  that  it  should  be 
the  end  of  all  sound  political,  social  and  economic  policy 

to  preserve  it. 

2.  Competition  and  the  Reward  of  Merit.  Thus  there 
is  still  a  sort  of  natural  selection  of  the  fit  in  a  competitive 
economic  system.  In  the  strict  biological  sense  natural 
selection  involves  an  irreconcilable  conflict,  a  fight  to  the 
finish.  The  defeated  party  must  not  be  merely  cowed  into 
submission,  or  put  out  of  action;  he  must  perish  altogether. 
For  the  crucial  point  is  that  the  relatively  unfit  should  have 
no  offspring.  Now  in  that  sense  struggle  among  individuals 
within  the  same  social  group  has  certainly  largely  disap- 
peared. There  are  those,  however,  who  believe  that  while 
physical  violence  is  a  thing  of  the  past,  economic  competi- 
tion still  accomplishes  the  same  end  at  the  lower  limit  of 
human  capacity.  The  ignorant,  poor  and  unskilled  do,  it 
is  true,  show  more  fecundity  than  the  more  fortunate  classes. 
But  below  this  lowest  class  of  labor,  which  holds  its  place 
and  survives  because  after  all  it  possesses  certain  staple 
virtues  such  as  endurance,  industry,  thrift  and  physical 
stamina,  —  below  this  class  there  are  the  utterly  unfit  who 
never  find  a  place  for  themselves  anywhere;  who  may  sur- 
vive for  a  time  as  tramps,  loafers,  or  dependents,  in  some 
category  beyond  the  pale,  but  who  on  the  whole  die  out  as 
rapidly  as  they  come  into  existence.  They  define  a  lower 
limit  or  threshold  of  social  efl&ciency,  short  of  which  a  man 
cannot  secure  any  footing  at  all. 


i 


136 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


According  to  the  view  we  are  here  considering,^  it  is 
important  that  society  should  not  further  lower  that  limit 
by  moderating  the  rigor  of  economic  competition.  Let 
every  man  prove  his  fitness  by  making  a  place  for  himself; 
and  if  he  and  his  kind  disappear,  let  that  be  regarded  as 
proof  that  the  race  is  better  for  having  his  strain  eliminated. 
Furthermore,  though  the  fate  of  actual  annihilation  over- 
takes only  the  grossly  unfit  at  the  margin,  nevertheless  in  a 
free  competitive  system  the  amount  of  a  man's  reward  may 
be  taken  as  a  rough  index  of  his  social  efficiency.  This  holds 
all  up  and  down  the  scale.  The  rich  and  the  powerful  are 
those  whom  nature  most  favored  with  native  vigor  and 
aptitude.  The  poor  and  lowly  are  not  destroyed.  They 
are  allowed  to  live,  and  to  continue  their  stock.  But  they 
play  a  passive  role.  They  have  no  prestige.  The  ideals 
and  policy  of  the  group  are  dominated  by  the  successful; 
and  the  unsuccessful  merely  re-echo,  reflect,  and  adopt  that 
which  originates  with  others. 

It  is  clear  that  this  is  a  departure  from  strict  Darwinism, 
because  it  does  not  touch  the  question  of  the  improvement 
or  deterioration  of  the  race  in  its  inborn  physical  qualities. 
It  may  be  said  to  be  broadly  Darwinian  in  principle  only 
because  it  proclaims  that  the  individual  shall  be  allowed 
within  limits  prescribed  by  law  to  take  what  he  can  get. 
It  is  conceived  to  be  good  for  society  as  a  whole  that  the 
man  who  can  get  more  of  wealth  or  power  than  his  neighbor, 
should  be  allowed  to  do  so.  By  allowing  each  individual  to 
keep  what  he  can  get,  society  encourages  each  man  to  exert 
himself  to  the  utmost  and  to  bring  his  full  powers  into  play. 
So  that  although  there  is  no  guarantee  that  the  native 
capacity  of  the  race  shall  be  improved  or  even  maintained 
at  the  present  level,  that  capacity  will  at  any  rate  be  uti- 
lized to  the  maximum. 

In  his  Social  Evolution,  a  book  which  was  widely  read  a 
generation  ago,  Benjamin  Kidd  has  defended  the  interesting 
thesis  that  if  competitive  struggle  be  construed  in  this  gen- 

1  The  view  is  best  represented  perhaps  by  T.  N.  Carver,  a.,  e.g.,  his  Essays 
tn  Social  Justice,] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  DARWINISM 


137 


eralized  sense,  civilization,  instead  of  interfering  with  it,  has 
positively  facilitated  it.  The  most  characteristic  feature 
of  the  history  of  civilization,  he  thinks,  is  the  development  of 
democracy,  the  progressive  emancipation  of  those  who  have 
been  the  objects  of  an  unjust  discrimination.  Kidd's  idea  is 
that  the  development  of  democracy  has  resulted  in  introduc- 
ing competition  and  struggle  on  a  scale  hitherto  unheard 
of.  The  movement  toward  '^ individual,  economic,  political 
and  social  enfranchisement,"  has  led  to  a  more  vigorous, 
a  *' freer  and  fairer"  rivalry.  The  old  caste  system  inter- 
fered with  competition  through  disqualifying  or  handicap- 
ping large  social  groups. 

'  "As  the  evolutionist  ponders  on  this  process  of  development, 
its  immense  significance  is  gradually  perceived.  ...  Its  inherent 
tendency  he  sees  must  be  not  to  suspend  the  rivalry  of  life,  but  to 
raise  it  to  the  highest  possible  degree  as  a  cause  of  progress.  So 
far  from  our  civilization  tending  to  produce  an  interruption  of  or 
an  exception  to  the  cosmic  process  which  has  been  in  progress  from 
the  beginning  of  life,  its  distinctive  and  characteristic  feature,  he 
observes,  must  be  found  in  the  exceptional  degree  to  which  it  has 
furthered  it.  The  significance  of  the  entire  order  of  social  change 
in  progress  amongst  the  Western  peoples  consists,  in  short,  in  the 
single  fact  that  this  cosmic  process  tends  thereby  to  obtain  amongst 
us  the  fullest,  highest,  and  completest  expression  it  has  ever  reached 
in  the  history  of  the  race."  ^ 

The  moral  of  such  a  philosophy  of  progress  is  to  open  the 
competition  as  widely  and  freely  as  possible.  The  authority 
of  the  state  would  be  used  only  to  guarantee  that  all  shall 
have  a  fair  chance.  But  it  is  important  to  note  that  in 
order  really  to  equalize  the  struggle  it  may  be  necessary 
radically  to  alter  existing  institutions.  Institutions  and 
laws  which  once  established  a  fair  basis  for  competition 
may  cease  to  do  so  under  changed  conditions.  Something 
of  this  sort  has  undoubtedly  occurred  in  the  case  of  our  laws 
governing  private  property.  For  frontiersmen  directly  ex- 
ploiting the  resources  of  nature  the  most  important  thing 
is  that  each  man  should  be  guaranteed  the  secure  posses- 

»  Pp.  152-153,  i55»  157. 


138 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


sion  of  the  fruits  of  his  own  industry  and  skill.     A  man  may 
enter  the  race  stripped  to  his  bare  talents,  as  nature  equipped 
him,  and  he  will  win  or  fail  on  his  merits.     But  in  a  highly 
organized  industrial  society  a  man's  chance  is  greatly,  per- 
haps decisively,  affected  by  his  educational  opportunities, 
his  possession  of  capital,  or  the  personal  connections  which 
he  owes  to  the  social  station  into  which  he  is  born.     Under 
such  conditions  it  is  wrong  to  assume  that  the  fairest  thing, 
or  the  thing  most  favorable  to  free  and  open  competition,  is 
to  let  matters  alone.     If  one  is  going  to  appeal  at  all  to  the 
value  of  competition  as  bringing  all  talent  into  play  and 
the  best  to  the  top,  then  one  must  concede  that  this  value 
will  be  realized  only  in  so  far  as  all  talent  has  a  chance,  the 
terms  of  the  competition  being  such  that  only  merit  can 
prevail.     If  you  hold  competitive  trials  in  order  to  select  a 
team  to  represent  the  university  in  a  cross-country  run  you 
can  get  the  best  only  provided  you  so  arrange  the  trials  that 
nothing  but  speed  and  endurance  affect  success.     This  may 
require  elaborate  rules  and  arrangements.     As  a  matter  of 
fact  sport  has  become  fairer,  and  records  of  skill  more  trust- 
worthy, in  proportion  as  these  activities  have  been  more 
systematically  regulated.     Merely  letting  things  alone  does 
not  in  the  least  imply  fairness,  for  it  means  faUing  back  upon 
whatever  terms  and  conditions  of  competition  may  happen 
at  the  time  to  be  in  vogue.     So  in  human  life  at  large  much 
in  the  way  of  social  legislation  that  may  seem  paternalistic, 
that  may  seem  specially  indulgent   to   the  weaknesses  of 
a  special  class,  will  upon  more  careful  scrutiny  appear  as 
only  a  means  of  offsetting  existing  inequalities,  and  so  of 
making  more  men  eligible  for  success  and  leadership.     The 
more  men  eligible,  the  wider  the  range  of  choice,  the  greater 
the  chance  that  any  society  will  develop  and  utilize  its 
human  resources  to  the  maximum. 

3.  Struggle  between  Social  Groups.  The  most  impor- 
tant extension  of  Darwinism  is  to  the  rivalry  between  groups. 
There  the  doctrine  may  be  applied  with  some  approach  to 
strictness.  The  competing  units  of  life  are  races  or  nations; 
the  struggle  for  existence  is  war;  the  outcome  is  victory  of 


THE  ETHICS  OF  DARWINISM 


139 


the  stronger,  who,  seizing  territory  and  other  natural  re- 
sources, is  thereby  enabled  to  increase  in  numbers  and 
supersede  its  unsuccessful  rival.  So  the  strong  inherit  the 
earth.  The  strongest  ethnic  or  social  types  are  selected  for 
survival,  and  the  standard  of  human  attainment  is  preserved. 
Consider  the  following  statement  of  the  case  by  Mr. 
Karl  Pearson: 

*'This  dependence  of  progress  on  the  survival  of  the  fitter  race, 
terribly  black  as  it  may  seem,  gives  the  struggle  for  existence  its 
redeeming  features;  it  is  the  fiery  crucible  out  of  which  comes  the 
finer  metal.  You  may  hope  for  the  time  when  the  sword  shall  be 
turned  into  the  ploughshare,  when  American  and  German  and  Eng- 
lish traders  shall  no  longer  compete  in  the  markets  of  the  world 
for  their  raw  material  and  for  their  food  supply,  when  the  white 
man  and  the  dark  shall  divide  the  soil  between  them  and  each 
till  as  he  lists.  But  .  .  .  when  that  day  comes,  mankind  will  no 
longer  progress;  there  will  be  nothing  to  check  the  fertility  of 
inferior  stock;  the  relentless  law  of  heredity  will  not  be  controlled 
and  guided  by  natural  selection.  Man  will  stagnate;  and  unless 
he  ceases  to  multiply,  the  catastrophe  will  come  again;  famine 
and  pestilence  as  we  see  them  in  the  East,  physical  selection, 
instead  of  the  struggle  of  race  against  race,  will  do  the  work  more 
relentlessly,  and,  to  judge  from  India  and  China,  far  less  eflSciently 
than  of  old.''  ^ 

But  social  competition,  like  that  between  individuals,  may 
imply  not  elimination  but  only  subordination.  It  may  im- 
ply only  that  the  defeated  are  enslaved,  or  reduced  in  ter- 
ritory, wealth  or  prestige. 

In  this  inter-group  struggle  the  victory  is  not  to  those 
societies  in  whom  the  higher  faculties  are  most  cultivated, 
to  those  most  gifted  in  intellect  or  imagination,  but  to 
those  possessing  a  sort  of  social  vitality,  depending  on  the 
simpler  virtues  and  on  group  coherence.  Thus  Professor 
Carver  says: 

"The  problem  is,  which  group  will  succeed  best  in  expanding,  m 
securing  territory,  defending  its  boundaries,  and  finally  in  crowding 

*  National  Life  from  the  Standpoint  of  Science.  I  owe  this  quotation  to 
A.  O.  Lovejoy,  "Some  Aspects  of  Darwin's  Influence  upon  Modern  Thought," 
Bulletin  of  Washington  University,  April  1909. 


I40 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  other  communities  off  the  face  of  the  earth.  The  community 
that  succeeds  in  this  final  test  will  be  the  community  with  the  best 
moral  and  social  organization."  ^ 

Benjamin  Kidd  makes  an  application  that  has  acquired 
new  interest,  though  scarcely  new  force,  in  the  light  of 
recent  events. 

''At  a  future  time,"  he  says,  ''when  the  history  of  the  nineteenth 
century  comes  to  be  written  with  that  sense  of  proportion  which 
distance  alone  can  give,  it  will  be  perceived  that  there  are  two  great 
features  of  this  century  which  give  a  distinctive  character  to  its 
history,  and  by  the  side  of  which  all  other  developments  and  events 
will  appear  dwarfed  and  insignificant.    The  first  is  the  complete 
and  absolute  triumph  throughout  our  Western  civilization  of  the 
principles  of  that  political  idealism  which  found  expression  in  the 
French  Revolution.    The  second  is  the  equally  triumphant  and 
overwhelming  expansion  of  the  peoples  of  Teutonic  stock,  and  the 
definite  and  final  worsting  by  them  in  the  struggle  for  existence, 
at  nearly  every  point  of  contact  throughout  the  worid,  of  that  other 
branch  of  the  Western  peoples  whose  intellectual  capacity  has  thus 
so  distinctly  left  its  mark  upon  the  century."  2 

And  then  he  goes  on  to  say  that, 

"It  is  not  intellectual  capacity  that  natural  selection  appears 
to  be  developing  in  the  first  instance,  but  other  quahties  contribut- 
mg  more  directly  to  social  efficiency,  and,  therefore,  of  immensely 
more  importance  and  potency  in  the  social  evolution  which  man- 
kmd  is  undergoing.  There  can  be  Httle  doubt  that  the  ascendancy 
which  the  Teutonic  peoples  have  won,  and  are  winning  in  the  world, 
IS  mamly  due  to  the  higher  and  fuUer  developments  these  last 
mentioned  qualities  have  attained  amongst  them."  ^ 

II.    THE  NEW  ETHICS 

It  is  essential  to  the  Darwinian  ethics  that  it  not  only 
offers  a  theory  of  progress,  or  an  account  of  the  method 
and  forces  by  which  value  is  conserved  in  the  world,  but 
also  a  theory  as  to  what  constitutes  value.  This  is  per- 
haps best  illustrated  in  the  following  somewhat  cynical  and 

^  Op.cit.,  p.  75. 

^  Social  Evolution,  p.  299. 

'  Ibid.y  pp.  303-304. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  DARWINISM 


141 


somewhat  paradoxical  statement  which  I  cite  from  Pro- 
fessor Carver: 

*'But  it  is  depressing  to  think  how  little  human  likes  and  dislikes 
coimt  in  the  long  run  in  social  evolution.  The  world  will  be  what 
it  will  be  whether  we  like  it  or  not.  If  our  likes  or  dislikes  are  such 
as  to  unfit  us  for  survival,  we  shall  eventually  cease  to  count. 
They  whose  likes  and  dislikes  fit  them  for  survival  will  continue 
to  count,  and  the  worid  will  eventually  be  peopled  by  them,  and 
their  likes  and  dislikes  will  eventually  be  selected  for  survival."  ^ 

This  is  a  cynical  view  because  it  virtually  states  that  all 
ideals  are  illusions,  as  respects  both  their  importance  and 
the  possibility  of  their  realization.  It  is  a  paradoxical  view, 
because  if  human  likes  and  dislikes  do  not  "count,''  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  they  either  fit  or  unfit  man  for  survival. 
The  meaning,  however,  is  clear.  We  are  mistaken  in  sup- 
posing that  man's  ideals  will  be  fulfilled,  or  that  it  is  good 
that  they  should  be.  But  that  men  should  have  ideals  of 
a  certain  sort  makes  them  relatively  strong  in  the  struggle 
for  existence.  The  great  struggle  as  Carver  sees  it  is  the 
struggle  between  social  groups.  Success  in  this  struggle 
will  depend  on  the  efficiency  of  the  group  as  a  unit,  but  this 
in  turn  will  depend  on  the  possession  by  individuals  of  the 
group  of  certain  fundamental  qualities.  Thus  the  colonial 
expansion  of  England  has  been  made  possible  by  the  regard 
which  the  individual  in  that  group  has  for  what  he  calls  ''  the 
word  of  an  Englishman."     Kidd  mentions  other  qualities. 

"Occupying  a  high  place  amongst  them  are  such  characteristics 
as  strength  and  energy  of  character,  humanity,  probity  and  in- 
tegrity, and  simple-minded  devotion  to  conceptions  of  duty  in 
such  circimistances  as  may  arise."  ^ 

But  far  the  most  important  force  in  group  survival,  accord- 
ing to  this  writer,  is  religion,  which  like  the  moral  qualities 
mentioned  above  is  valued  not  for  its  truth,  or  for  the  soul's 
eternal  salvation,  but  for  its  power  of  social  discipHne. 

"The  function  of  that  unmense  and  characteristic  class  of 
social  phenomena  which  we  have  in  our  religious  systems,  is  to 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  19. 
«  Op.  cit.,  p.  345' 


142 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


secure  this  necessary  subordination  of  the  present  interests  of  the 
self-assertive  individual  to  the  general  interests  of  the  process  of 
evolution  which  is  in  progress."^ 

In  short  the  ordinary  code  of  morals  or  of  religion,  in  so 
far  as  it  is  retained,  is  justified  because  it  conduces  to  might, 
or  power  to  survive  and  prevail.  The  ultimate  value,  then, 
is  might.  This  doctrine  appears  in  two  forms:  might  is 
righty  and  might  is  admirable  and  worthy. 

I.   Might  is  Right.     Some  ethical  systems  are  founded 
upon  a  conception  of  what  is  obligatory  or  permitted,  or  in 
agreement  with  some  law  or  principle;    others  are  founded 
upon  a  conception  of  what  is  admirable  or  desirable.     The 
former  is  the  ethics  of  right;  the  latter  is  the  ethics  of  good. 
There  is  a  Darwinian  version  of  each  type.     According  to 
the  Darwinian  ethics  of  right,  what  one  is  morally  obliged 
or  permitted  to  do  is  determined  only  by  the  measure  of 
one's  power.     To  the  strongest  all  things  are  permissible; 
to  the  helpless,  nothing.    At  railroad  crossings  trains  have 
a  right  to  precedence  over  vehicles  because  they  are  stronger, 
and  at  street-crossings  vehicles  enjoy  a  similar  right  to  pre- 
cede pedestrians.     So  the  strong  man  or  nation  enjoys  a 
sort  of  universal  right  of  way.     Submission  to  restrictions 
is  a  confession  of  weakness.    It  indicates  a  willingness  to 
give  way  to  the  strong  for  the  sake  of  securing  their  favor 
or  protection. ^  He  has  a  "right"  who  is  strong  enough  to 
assert  it.     This  view  is  consistently  developed  in  an  article 
by  Professor  Seeberg,  a  bellicose  theologian  of  the  University 
of  Berlin.    A  nation's  ability  to  hold  a  territory  is  a  test 
of  their  right  to  it.     Right  is  measured  by  "  Lebenskraft ''  — 
"  Lebenswilkr    The  small  nation,  such  as  Belgium,  or  the 
degenerate  nation,  such  as  France,  has  no  rights  against  the 
large  healthy  nation  like  Germany.     In  times  of  peace  weak- 
ness is  not  apparent,  and  unfit  nations  go  on  enjoying  rights 
to  which  they  have  no  proper  claim.     France,  in  particu- 
lar, has  long  been  regarded  in  Germany  as  rotten  at  the  core, 
with  no  national  vigor  at  all  proportionate  to  her  national 

*  Ibid.y  p.  315. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  DARWINISM 


143 


pretensions.  *'Thus  war,"  says  Professor  Seeberg,  "is  the 
great  test  of  the  nations  ";  "it  reveals  the  lie  and  enthrones 
truth  in  its  place."  ^ 

This  view,  like  that  which  would  reduce  all  rights  to  legal 
rights,  does  not  explain  moral  rights,  but  denies  them.  For 
a  moral  right  is  something  which  you  claim  on  principle 
before  you  possess  it  in  fact.  The  right  of  woman  suffrage, 
for  example,  existed  in  this  sense  before  it  was  legally 
acknowledged,  and  before  women  had  grown  powerful  enough 
to  obtain  it  by  force.  Indeed  their  power  to  obtain  it  was 
not  a  power  to  use  force,  but  a  power  over  public  opinion 
by  effective  appeal  to  generally  acknowledged  moral  and 
political  axioms.  Rights  are  first  defined  in  terms  of  gen- 
eral ethical  principles  accepted  in  the  community;  as  woman 
suffrage,  for  example,  was  first  defined  in  terms  of  prin- 
ciples of  democracy,  representative  government,  and  social 
welfare.  They  are  then  fought  for,  most  actively  by  those 
who  claim  them,  but  by  arguments  which  are  calculated  to 
secure  the  support  of  disinterested  opinion.  Finally,  if  they 
are  won  they  are  incorporated  into  the  system  of  positive 
law  and  enforced  by  the  state.  They  were  moral  rights  in 
their  first  phase,  assuming  that  the  arguments  by  which 
they  were  supported  were  sound  arguments.  If  not,  if 
rights  are  only  rights  when  they  are  successfully  asserted, 
or  legally  enacted,  then  there  could  be  no  such  thing  as 
fighting  for  one's  rights,  since  these  rights  would  not  exist 
until  after  they  were  won;  and  there  would  be  no  such 
thing  as  being  denied  one's  rights,  since  rights  that  failed 
to  obtain  recognition  would  be  no  rights  at  all. 

2.  The  Ideal  of  Might.  But  might,  the  power  not  ''to 
live  and  let  live,"  but  to  live  and  outlive,  may  be  thought 
to  be  the  goal  of  life. 

"That  is  strength  which  in  the  end  brings  survival."  "Let  us 
assume  that  the  great  problem  of  the  human  race,  as  of  every  other 
species  of  life,  is  to  keep  on  living."  ^ 

*  R.  Seeberg:    "Das  Sittliche  Recht  des  Krieges,"  Internationale  Monat- 
schrifty  Oct.  1914.    Qu.  by  Chevrillon,  England  and  the  War. 
2  Carver:  Social  Justice,  pp.  74,  33. 


144 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


It  follows,  we  are  allowed  to  infer,  that  the  superlatively 
important  and  significant  thing  is  strength.  There  is  a  type 
of  nation  which  is  vigorous,  sound  at  the  heart  —  which 
tends  to  expand  from  within,  to  grow  and  to  possess.  This 
nation,  and  such  men  as  make  it  up,  shall  inherit  the 
earth;  and  we  are  asked  to  admire  this  type  and  attempt  to 
realize  it. 

In  discussing  this  view  we  must  never  lose  sight  of  this 
essential  point,  that  power,  strength,  might,  is  defined  in 
terms  of  survival.     It  is  not  that  the  mighty  survive;    but 
that  surviving  is  what  is  meant  by  being  mighty.     To  be 
mighty  is  to  be  able  to  triumph  over  others  in  the  struggle 
for  existence.     If  we  adhere  strictly  to   this   teaching  it 
must  follow  that  it  makes  no  difference  what  form  that 
struggle  assumes;   whatever  the  form  of  the  struggle,  to  be 
superior  is  to  be  strong,  and  to  be  strong  is  to  be  admirable. 
But  now  consider  that  there  are  as  many  types  of  supe- 
riority as  there  are  kinds  of  struggle,  and  that  the  variety 
of  these  is  limitless.     Suppose  that  you  had  eight  different 
competitive  trials,  the  first,  let  us  say,  in  putting  the  fifty- 
six  pound  shot,  the  second  in  steeple-chmbing,  the  third  in 
mental  arithmetic,  the  fourth  in  poker,  the  fifth  in  oratory, 
the  sixth  in  piano-moving,  the  seventh  in  crocheting,  and 
the  eighth  in  glass-eating.     If  you  lined  up  in  a  row  all  the 
successful  competitors,  all  the  survivors  from  these  strug- 
gles, you  would  have  a  most  varied  assortment  of  human 
beings,  as  I  think  you  will  agree.     I  doubt  if  you  would 
find  any  one  of  them  who  would  be  your  ideal  of  the  man  of 
might.     What  would  be  that  power  to  win,  that  surviving- 
capacity-in-general    which    all    would    have    in    common? 
Nothing,  except  perhaps  a  roughly  human  anatomy,  a  spark 
of  life  and  a  low  minimum  of  intelligence.     If  you  tried  to 
combine  their  individual  peculiarities  in  one  superman  he 
would  certainly  be  unable  to  triumph  in  any  of  the  compe- 
titions.    Success  in  a  really  severe  struggle  requires  con- 
centration in  the  peculiar  qualities  which  just  that  compe- 
tition calls  forth. 

Now  the  struggle  for  existence  is  just  as  varied  and  in- 


THE  ETHICS  OF  DARWINISM 


145 


determinate  a  thing  as  these  examples  suggest.  It  varies 
all  the  way  from  snatching  candy  from  a  baby  up  to  a  ten 
years'  war  with  one-half  of  humanity  organized  against 
the  other  half.  There  are  short  struggles  and  long  ones; 
struggles  of  violence  and  struggles  of  intrigue;  bodily  strug- 
gles and  machine  struggles;  individual  struggles  and  collec- 
tive struggles.  The  surviving  type  changes  with  every 
change  in  the  methods  and  conditions  of  the  struggle.  It 
was  once  the  type  of  Roland.  A  generation  ago  in  America 
it  was  the  type  of  the  trust  magnate.  The  qualities  requi- 
site for  success  may  be  physical  courage  and  chivalry,  or 
they  may  be  cunning  and  sanctimoniousness.  Among  na- 
tions, according  as  conditions  change,  success  may  be  favored 
by  avarice  or  by  martial  vigor,  or  by  scientific  research,  or  by 
political  submissiveness,  or  by  revolutionary  individualism. 
The  most  significant  illustration  of  this  relativity  of  the 
conception  of  might  is  the  difference  between  the  struggle 
of  war  and  the  struggle  of  peace.  War  as  we  are  now  hav- 
ing most  unforgettably  impressed  on  us,  absolutely  revolu- 
tionizes methods  of  social  life  and  the  scale  of  social  values. 
Entering  a  war  is  doing  on  a  colossal  scale  what  a  man  does 
when  he  leaves  the  duties  and  pastimes  of  ordinary  fife  and 
trains  for  a  Marathon  run.  Now  when  a  nation  is  entered 
for  a  war,  trained,  stripped,  narrowly  preoccupied,  tense, 
alert,  it  is  abandoning  or  subordinating  a  thousand  other 
interests,  art,  commerce,  social  service,  learning,  political 
reforms.  It  is  for  the  time  being  growing  to  be  a  warrior 
society,  as  distinguished  from  a  commercial  or  philanthropic 
or  humanistic  society.  Now  our  Darwinian  view  would 
virtually  assert  that  such  a  change  has  no  relation  to  value. 
The  form  of  group  competition  does  not  signify,  but  only 
the  degree  of  success.  In  other  words  —  Rome  conquering 
the  world  by  force  of  arms,  is  not  less  good  than  a  Greece 
conquering  it  by  force  of  ideas,  or  a  Judaea  conquering  it  by 
the  force  of  religious  sentiment.  Indeed  this  view  derives 
from  its  biological  origins  a  strong  tendency  to  favor  the 
ruder  and  more  violent  forms  of  struggle,  as  being  more 
unmistakably  biological. 


146 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE  ETHICS  OF  DARWIITISM 


147 


Unless  we  bear  these  things  in  mind  we  shall  be  misled  by 
the  specious  plausibility  of  this  ideal  of  might,  a  plausi- 
bility derived  from  the  impulse  to  hero-worship,  and  from 
our  practice  of  using  terms  like  "strong,'*  '* powerful," 
"mighty,"  as  implying  completeness  and  nobiUty.  The 
essential  principle  of  the  Darwinian  moralists  is  that  of 
struggle;  and  the  type  of  the  survivor  in  struggle  is  as 
high  or  as  low  as  is  the  form  of  the  struggle  in  which  they 
engage. 

It  is  true  that  the  Darwinian  commonly  thinks  of  struggle 
as  inter-social,  and  therefore  requiring  on  the  part  of  indi- 
viduals a  subordination  of  themselves  to  the  group.  And 
this  we  find  to  be  admirable  according  to  conventional 
moral  standards.  But  when  we  admire  the  restraint  of  the 
individual  we  are  thinking  of  the  brother  whom  this  re- 
straint regards  and  favors.  The  Darwinian  is  thinking  of 
the  greater  blow  which  the  brothers  twain  may  deliver 
against  the  common  enemy.  For,  if  the  Darwinian  moralist 
meant  to  praise  restraint,  discipline,  subordination,  then 
logic  would  compel  him  to  look  beyond  struggle  between 
groups  to  a  federation  of  mankind  in  which  nations  and  in- 
dividuals alike  were  cemented  in  brotherly  union.  The 
strongest  life  in  this  sense  would  be  the  common  life  of 
humanity  with  no  enemy  remaining  except  those  hardships 
and  evils  which  nature  herself  imposes,  and  which  a  united 
mankind  might  then  hope  speedily  to  diminish. 

III.    DARWINISM  AND   SOCIALISM 

In  an  address  before  the  Congress  of  Naturalists  held  at 
Munich  in  1877,  Haeckel  contended  that  Darwinism  was 
opposed  to  socialism.  As  himself  a  good  Darwinian,  he 
offered  this  as  an  argument  against  socialism. 

"The  theory  of  selection  teaches  that  in  the  life  of  humanity,  as 
in  that  of  plants  and  animals,  everywhere  and  always  a  small 
privileged  minority  alone  succeeds  in  living  and  developing  itself; 
the  immense  majority,  on  the  contrary,  suffer  and  succumb  more 
or  less  prematurely.    The  germs  of  every  kind  of  plant  and  animal; 


and  the  young  that  are  produced  from  them,  are  innumerable. 
But  the  number  of  those  which  have  the  good  fortune  to  develop 
to  their  complete  maturity  and  which  attain  the  aim  of  their  exist- 
ence, is  comparatively  insignificant.  .  .  .  ^4//  are  called,  but  few  are 
chosen.  The  selection,  the  'election*  of  these  'chosen  ones*  is 
necessarily  connected  with  the  defeat  or  the  loss  of  a  great  number 
of  their  living  fellow  creatures.  Thus,  another  learned  English- 
man has  called  the  fundamental  principle  of  Darwinism:  'the 
survival  of  the  fittest,  the  victory  of  the  best.*  In  every  case  the 
principle  of  the  selection  is  anything  rather  than  democratic:  it  is, 
on  the  contrary,  thoroughly  aristocratic.**  ^ 

The  writer  who  quotes  the  above  passage  from  Haeckel 
then  proceeds  to  defend  socialism  against  the  aspersion  of 
being  anti-Darwinian.  Socialism,  he  points  out,  has  recog- 
nized the  essentially  biological  character  of  society  in  its 
emphasis  on  the  importance  of  the  fundamental  biological 
motives,  such  as  reproduction  and  food-getting.  Further- 
more, it  attaches  central  importance  to  the  principle  of 
struggle. 

I.  Class  Struggle.  This  latter  contention  might  seem  to 
be  belied  by  socialism's  attack  upon  the  competitive  eco- 
nomic system.     True  socialism,  Benjamin  Kidd  has  said, 

"has  always  one  definite  object  in  view,  up  to  which  all  its  pro- 
posals directly  or  indirectly  lead.  This  is  the  final  suspension  of  that 
personal  struggle  for  existence  which  has  been  waged,  not  only 
from  the  beginning  of  society,  but,  in  one  form  or  another,  from  the 
beginning  of  life.**  ^ 

But  socialism,  says  Ferri,  has  recognized  that  the  deeper 
struggle,  which  determines  the  course  of  history,  is  the 
struggle  of  classes. 

"In  the  historic  period  Graeco-Latin  society  struggles  for  civil 
equality  (abolition  of  slavery);  it  triumphs,  but  does  not  stop 
because  life  is  a  struggle;  the  society  of  the  middle  ages  struggles 
for  religious  equality,  gains  it,  but  does  not  stop;  and  at  the  end 
of  the  1 8th  century  it  struggles  for  political  equality.    Should  it 

'  Qu.  by  Enrico  Ferri,  Socialism  and  Positive  Science^  English  trans.,  Fifth 
Edition,  pp.  4-5. 

*  Social  Evolution,  pp.  222-223.    Cf.  pp.  219,  230. 


148 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE  ETHICS  OF  DARWINISM 


149 


now  stop  and  rest  in  its  present  state?  To-day  society  struggles  for 
economic  equality,  not  for  an  absolutely  material  equality,  but  for 
this  more  positive  equality  of  which  I  have  spoken.  And  every- 
thing makes  us  foresee  with  mathematical  certainty  that  this  victory 
will  be  gained  to  give  place  to  new  struggles  for  new  ideals  among 
our  descendants."  ^ 

The  shepherds  against  the  warriors,  the  plebeians  against 
the  patricians,  the  vassals  against  the  feudatories,  the  com- 
moners against  the  nobles  — each  in  turn  won  its  way 
against  the  privileged  and  possessing  class.  And  now  these 
struggles  are  succeeded  by  the  greatest  of  all,  the  struggle 
of  the  proletariat  against  the  bourgeoisie.  Thus  the  Dar- 
winian law  of  struggle  is  observed,  not  between  man  and 
man,  nor  even  between  nation  and  nation,  but  between 
class  and  class,  where  the  great  issues  of  social  form  and 
organization  are  determined. 

2.  The  Transformation  of  Struggle.  But  there  is  an 
aspect  of  this  view  which  though  it  compromises  its  Dar- 
winian orthodoxy  is  nevertheless  creditable  to  its  ethical 
enlightenment.  We  are  told  that  although  struggle  is  the 
law  of  life  and  the  condition  of  progress,  there  is  a  scale  of 
struggle,  in  which  it  assumes  higher  and  higher  forms. 
Struggle  tends  to  become  less  and  less  wasteful.  There  is 
a  "law  of  decreasing  disproportion  between  the  'called' 
and  the  'chosen.'  "  ^  The  methods  employed  tend  to  be 
more  and  more  refined,  more  intellectual  and  humane.  And 
above  all  the  issues  of  the  struggle  become  more  and  more 
significant.  Socialism  would  eliminate  once  and  for  all  the 
struggle  for  food,  for  the  bare  means  of  subsistence  —  a 
struggle  that  must  call  into  play  the  most  sordid  motives 
and  the  most  brutal  methods.  Liberated  from  the  degrad- 
ing necessity  of  struggling  for  food,  men  may  compete  upon 
a  higher  plane  for  superior  values.  Such  competition  will 
be  less  greedy  and  less  violent,  and  will  put  a  premium  upon 
the  possession  of  higher  faculties. 

Now  it  is  clear  that  although  the  language  of  Darwinism 

*  op.  cit.,  p.  27. 

*  Fern:  op,  cit.^  p.  23. 


is  still  employed  there  is,  nevertheless,  an  advance  here  to  a 
new  set  of  ideas.  Brunetiere  has  argued  that  there  is  no 
more  ethics  in  evolution  than  you  put  into  it.  ''  The  moral- 
ity which  one  can  extract  from  the  evolutionary  doctrine, 
will  always  be  a  '  refracted '  morality,  of  which  one  must 
look  elsewhere  for  the  origin.''  ^  Socialism  has  certainly  gone 
to  sources  other  than  scientific  evolutionism  for  its  ethical 
light.  Darwinism,  vigorously  interpreted,  defines  no  value 
save  that  of  the  survival  of  the  competing  unit^  of  life  under 
whatever  conditions  happen  to  exist.  Socialism  has  de- 
parted from  this  strict  interpretation,  and  in  so  doing  has 
unconsciously  shown  the  inadequacy  of  it.  If  a  less  wasteful 
struggle  is  better  than  a  relatively  destructive  struggle,  then 
no  struggle,  a  harmonious  accord  of  interests,  with  perhaps 
an  element  of  friendly  rivalry,  would  be  better  still.  If  the 
more  refined  and  more  humane  methods  of  struggle  are 
higher,  if  the  struggle  for  ideal  ends  is  higher  than  the 
struggle  for  bread  and  butter,  then  clearly  struggle  in  the 
sense  of  irreconcilable  conflict  and  forcible  dispossession  is 
not  good  at  all.  To  apply  these  standards  in  judging  the 
course  of  history  is  virtually  to  concede  that  though  struggle 
may  have  had  some  good  effects,  it  is  in  itself  inherently 
evil,  and  bound  therefore  to  disappear  just  in  proportion 
as  these  effects  are  good.  If  this  appear  paradoxical  our 
misgivings  will  be  removed  when  we  reflect  that  though 
struggle  results  in  the  survival  of  the  strong,  the  strong 
are  those  who  have  eliminated  struggle  among  their  own 
members,  and  are  themselves  proof  of  the  principle  that 
the  secret  of  a  strong  life  is  harmony  and  solidarity. 

1  F.  Brunetiere:  "La  morality  de  la  doctrine  6volutive,"  in  La  Science  a  la 
Religiont  p.  180. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 

I.  Nietzsche's  relation  to  naturalism 

The  question  of  Nietzsche's  relation  to  present  German 
policy  is  one  that  I  propose  to  discuss  more  fully  elsewhere. 
But  in  order  to  justify  the  general  presumption  that  this 
writer  has  something  to  do  with  what  is  now  going  on  in  the 
world,  I  should  like  to  cite  the  testimony  of  Professor  Kuno 
Francke  that  Richard  Wagner,  Friedrich  Nietzsche  and 
WiUiam  II  are  "perhaps  the  three  men  whose  influence  has 
shaped  the  feelings  and  ideals  of  the  present  generation  of 
Germans  most  conspicuously."^ 

I  do  not  mean  for  a  moment  to  contend  that  the  principles 
of  Nietzsche's  philosophy  have  been  carried  out  scrupu- 
lously and  consistently  by  any  large  number  of  persons. 
Perhaps  no  one  has  done  this.  I  doubt  if  it  lies  within  the 
power  of  any  one,  human  or  divine,  to  carry  them  out  con- 
sistently. I  doubt  if  any  thinker  of  Nietzsche's  type  ever 
had  any  large  number  of  followers  whom  he  would  himself 
admit  to  have  grasped  the  essence  of  his  teaching.  I  mean 
only  that  Nietzsche  has,  whether  intentionally  or  in  spite  of 
himself,  whether  by  understanding  or  by  misunderstanding, 
exercised  a  great  influence  on  ''  the  feeHngs  and  ideals  of  the 
present  generation,"  especially  in  Germany.  Of  this  there 
can,  I  think,  be  no  doubt. 

I  need  scarcely  say  that  Nietzsche  was  neither  a  madman 
nor  a  miscreant.  He  did  deliberately  assault  the  code  by 
which  most  of  civilized  European  mankind  conduct  their 
lives.  ^  He  was  perhaps  the  most  uncompromising  enemy  of 
Christianity  to  which  Christendom  has  given  birth.  But  he 
was  none  the  less  a  responsible  thinker,  and  a  devoted  and 
heroic  servant  of  what  he  took  to  be  the  good.     He  suffered 

^  A  German- American's  Confession  of  Faith ^  p.  21. 

ISO 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


151 


i 


much  from  ill-health,  and  spent  the  last  eleven  years  of  his 
life  the  helpless  victim  of  a  stroke  of  paralysis  which  de- 
stroyed his  sanity.  But  he  wrote  nothing  after  that  date; 
and  before  that  date,  during  his  active  career,  he  was  not 
more  insane  than  the  rest  of  us.  As  for  his  personal  char- 
acter he  was  considerably  superior  to  the  rest  of  us.  Indeed 
in  my  judgment  his  greatness  lies  in  the  force  of  his  per- 
sonality, the  intensity  of  his  conviction,  and  the  utter  un- 
worldliness  and  disinterestedness  of  his  purpose,  rather  than 
in  the  originality  or  profoundness  of  his  thought.^ 

In  discussing  Nietzsche  in  this  context  I  am  perhaps  put- 
ting too  much  emphasis  on  the  Darwinian  strain  in  his 
thought.     But  I  do  not  in  the  least  desire  to  argue  that  he  is 
consistently  evolutionary  or  even  consistently  naturalistic. 
There  is  a  strain  of  voluntarism  or  vitalism  in  him  that  would 
make  it  as  suitable  to  discuss  him  below  in  conjunction  with 
Bergson  as  here  in  conjunction  with  the  Darwinians.     Like 
every  unsystematic  thinker  whose  great  influence  for  better 
or  for  worse  is  unmistakable,  everybody  claims  him  and 
everybody  repudiates  him.     You  will  find  Catholics,  Protes- 
tants, atheists,  socialists,  individualists,  idealists,  pragma- 
tists  and  realists  all  discovering  a  secret  affinity  with  him,  or 
all  denouncing  what  each  on  his  own  grounds  finds  objection- 
able.    In  a  way  everybody  is  right.     Nietzsche  has  some- 
thing of  the  universality  of  the  artist  both  in  his  insight  and 
in  his  errors.    Like  Emerson  he  was  a  preacher  and  an  artist 
with  philosophical  ideas.    He  did  not  employ  the  philosoph- 
ical method.    In  spite,  therefore,  of  Mr.  Salter's^  admirable 
work,  I  think  it  is  a  mistake  to  assume  that  there  is  a  syste- 

1  As  for  Nietzsche's  originality,  I  have  some  sympathy  with  the  foUowing 

verdict,  though  I  should  not  go  so  far:  .,,.,.       t     v.-       u 

"Nietzsche  has  not  that  supreme  originality  which  he  claims  for  tumseit. 
Mix  Greek  sophistry  and  Greek  scepticism  with  the  naturalism  of  Hobbes  and 
the  monism  of  Schopenhauer  corrected  by  Darwin  and  seasoned  with  the 
paradoxes  of  Rousseau  and  Diderot,  and  the  result  will  be  the  philosophy  of 
Zarathustra."     A.  Fouillee:  "The  Ethics  of  Nietzsche  and  Guyau,     Intern. 

Journal  Ethics ^  1903,  p.  13-  ,    „  ,       ,        •    1    j-  -j-^^ 

2  W  M.  Salter:  Nietzsche  the  Thinker.  Even  Mr.  Salter  by  wisely  dividing 
his  work  into  three  periods  does  not  attempt  to  reduce  NieUsche's  philosophies 
to  less  than  three. 


152 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


153 


matic  logical  coherence  in  the  thought  of  Nietzsche.    He 
had  strong  temperamental  peculiarities,  such  as  are  associ- 
ated, for  example,  with  "  the  nerves  of  a  Shelley  and  the 
stomach  of  a  Carlyle";^  and  there  is  a  temperamental  con- 
sistency and  emotional  continuity  in  his  writings.     But  his 
temperament  was  not  of  the  sort  favorable  to  consistency 
and  continuity.     He  was  emphatic,  enthusiastic,  volcanic. 
When  he  changed,  as  he  did,  for  example,  in  his  attitude  to 
Wagner,  he  did  not  move  or  gravitate  —  he  jumped,  from 
passionate    admiration    to    equally    passionate    contempt. 
This  was  proof  of  his  honesty,  but  also  of  his  emotional  in- 
stability and  of  the  extent  to  which  his  professions  were 
governed  by  emotional  promptings.     He  says  of  himself, 
''All  truths  are  for  me  bloody  truths" ^ — outward  expressions 
of  his  whole  spiritual  struggle  in  which  the  heart  was  cer- 
tainly not  less  actively  enlisted  than  the  head.     Such  being 
the  case,  it  is  folly,  I  think,  to  attempt  to  deduce  his  thought 
from  a  formula  or  to  classify  him  as  a  whole. 

Furthermore,  while  I  do  believe  that  one  of  his  major 
teachings,  that  perhaps  which  has  most  affected  the  senti- 
ments of  our  age,  has  a  strong  Darwinian  coloring,  I  am  fully 
aware  that  Nietzsche  himself  had  much  fault  to  find  with 
Darwin.     He  rejected  the  Darwinian  notion  that  life  is 
essentially  adaptation.     On  the  contrary,  he  asserted,  it  is 
a  will  to  power  and  expansion.     He  regarded  Darwin's  idea 
of  the  universality  and  necessity  of  the  struggle  for  existence 
as  a  British  provincialism,  due  to  the  fact  that  Malthus  and 
Darwin  himself  lived  on  an  over-populated  island.     He  in- 
clined to  the  Lamarckean  view  that  structure  is  created  as 
the  outward  expression  of  the  organism's  will  and  need, 
rather  than  by  an  accumulation  of  accidental  variations. 
The   unhampered   struggle   for   existence   he   further   dis- 
approved as  tending  too  much  to  the  promotion  of  medi- 
ocrity and  the  homelier  social  virtues.     I  recognize,  finally, 
that  Nietzsche  approved  of  Darwin,   as  he  approved  of 
Schopenhauer  and  of  Wagner,  only  for  a  limited  period  of  his 

*  Huneker:  Egoists,  p.  260. 

*  Nachgelassene  Werke,  Vol.  XI,  §§  590-2. 


life,  in  this  case  the  middle  period;  and  that  the  most  Dar- 
winian of  his  writings,  Human  All  Too  Human,  is  not  to  be 
accepted  as  a  statement  of  his  later  and  maturer  views. 

Notwithstanding  these  many  and  very  considerable  quali- 
fications two  broad  and  important  facts  remain.  In  the 
first  place,  Nietzsche  was  converted  from  Schopenhauer  and 
other  metaphysical  influences,  delivered  from  every  ortho- 
doxy and  conservatism  of  belief,  and  established  upon  an 
explicitly  naturalistic  footing,  chiefly  through  the  influence 
of  evolutionary  biological  thought.  Furthermore,  he  found 
in  this  same  scientific  influence,  with  its  emphasis  on  life  and 
on  the  continuity  and  improvement  of  the  race,  the  starting- 
point  for  a  new  belief,  which  eventually  assumes  a  meta- 
physical and  religious  form.  The  evolutionary  phase  of  his 
thought  is  therefore  the  crucial  phase,  the  phase  of  recon- 
struction. Nietzsche  first  slays  God  and  looks  upon  the 
churches  as  his  "tombs  and  monuments."  ^  Then  God  being 
dead  there  is  none  so  fit  to  succeed  him  as  man  who  slew  him. 
To  make  mankind  a  worthy  object  of  worship  by  developing 
and  ennobling  him  becomes  the  new  goal  of  hope  and  en- 
deavor. But  man  for  Nietzsche  is  ''  of  the  earth,  earthy." 
He  is  to  be  taken  as  essentially  a  product  and  representative 
of  the  natural  life. 

"The  animal  functions  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a  million  times 
more  important  than  all  beautiful  states  of  the  soul  and  heights  of 
consciousness:  the  latter  are  an  overflow,  in  so  far  as  they  are  not 
needed  as  instruments  in  the  service  of  the  animal  functions.  The 
whole  of  conscious  life  .  .  .  ;  in  whose  service  does  it  work?  In 
the  greatest  possible  perfection  of  the  means  (for  acquiring  nourish- 
ment and  advancement)  serving  the  fundamental  animal  functions: 
above  all,  the  ascent  of  the  line  of  life''  ^ 

The  world  as  a  whole  is  without  a  goal,  being  but  ''  a 
monster  of  energy,  without  beginning  or  end."  ^ 

1  For  a  discussion  of  this  ^^ole  question,  cf.  Claire  Rrchter:   Nietzsche  et 
des  theories  Uologiques  contemporaines. 

2  Joyful  Wisdom,  III,,  §125.    Inciting  Nietzsche,  I  shall  ordinarily  refer 
to  the  English  translations  in  Levy's  edition. 

3  The  Will  to  Power,  674.    Cf.  §§  491-492- 
« /Wa.,§§  106-7. 


IS4 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


But  over  and  above  this  naturalistic,  evolutionary  recon- 
struction of  Nietzsche's  thought,   there  is  a  distinctively 
Darwinian  strain  in  his  ethics;  and  it  is  this  which  Nietzsche 
whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  has  come  to  represent  to  our 
generation.  ^  The  type  of  life  which  he  praises  and  urges  us 
to  cultivate  is  the  consciously  superior  type.     The  admirable 
man  is  the  man  who  exults  in  his  strength,  whose  strength  is 
proved  by  a  mastery  over  the  weak.     The  keen  edge  of  Hfe 
must  be  whetted  in  struggle.     But  to  take  such  an  edge 
life  must  be  hard,  like  tempered  steel.     The  strong  man 
must  assert  his  strength  without  scruple  or  squeamishness. 
The  subordination  or  suffering  of  the  weak  is  not  to  be  viewed 
with  sentimental  regret,  but  is  to  be  regarded  as  providing 
the  necessary  foil  by  which  the  man  of  might  proves  his 
strength,  and  as  providing  the  necessary  interval  by  which 
his  superior  elevation  is  marked.     That  there  is  deep  affinity 
between  this  teaching  and  that  of  the  Darwinians,  is  not,  I 
think,  open  to  question. 

II.    THE  ATTACK  UPON  THE  EXISTING  CODE 

The  only  formula  that  is  in  the  least  adequate  to  Nietzsche 
is  that  of  protest  against  the  reigning  tendencies  and  senti- 
ments of  his  age.  Call  to  mind  anything  which  seems  to  you 
m  your  thoroughly  ordinary  moments,  when  you  are  a  mere 
mouth-piece  of  the  Zeitgeist,  to  be  axiomatic  —  and  you  may 
be  reasonably  sure  that  Nietzsche  was  opposed  to  it.  What 
the  modern  age  is  most  proud  of,  Nietzsche  most  deplored; 
what  the  modern  age  most  ardently  and  with  most  convic- 
tion aspires  to,  Nietzsche  most  dreaded.  He  spoke  ^  of 
himself  as  proposing  a  '' transvaluation  of  all  values'' 
{Umwerthung  die  Werthe);  and  it  will  be  perhaps  as  a 
revolutionist  of  sentiment  that  his  fame  will  longest  endure. 

I.  Moral  Codes.  To  understand  Nietzsche's  manner  of 
treating  moraHty,  we  must  work  ourselves  into  that  detached 
frame  of  mind  in  which  we  see  that  there  are  many  morali- 
ties.    We  are  accustomed  to  the  view  that  there  is  a  code  of 

1  In  the  title  and  preface  of  the  unfinished  work.  The  WiU  to  Power, 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


155 


ethics  respected  in  the  medical  profession,  a  code  respected 
by  amateur  athletes,  a  code  observed  by  gentlemen,  and 
that  there  is  even  "honor  among  thieves."  Each  of  these 
codes  has  its  own  peculiar  rules  and  sentiments  recognized 
exclusively  by  the  class  in  question.  But  we  ordinarily  sup- 
pose that  below  these  there  is  an  absolute  morality,  consist- 
ing of  the  primary  virtues  like  justice  or  veracity;  and  that 
this  absolute  morality  is  mandatory  upon  all.  To  under- 
stand Nietzsche  we  must  transfer  to  morality  as  a  whole  the 
idea  which  we  familiarly  apply  to  a  special  code.  According 
to  Nietzsche,  absolute  morality  is  a  fiction.  There  are  only 
codes,  each  peculiar  to  a  group,  and  binding  within  that  group 
only  in  the  sense  that  it  happens  to  be  one  of  the  fundamental 
group  characteristics. 

Thus  a  physician  will  not  lure  away  another  man's  patients 
or  receive  fees  from  his  relatives  for  medical  attendance. 
There  is  no  written  law  against  these  things,  nor  any  outward 
penalty;  but  if  he  did  them  the  physician  would  lose  caste  in 
his  profession.  So  similarly  the  fact  that  we  entertain  chari- 
table sentiments  toward  the  wretched,  and  shrink  from  the 
taking  of  life,  signifies  that  we  happen  to  belong  to  a  group  in 
which  charity  and  humanity  are  esteemed,  and  in  which  there- 
fore their  violation  tends  to  social  disfavor.  Of  course  we  do 
not  ordinarily  view  matters  of  sentiment  in  this  dispassion- 
ate way.  Ordinarily  we  condemn  a  violation  of  our  class  code 
in  unqualified  terms,  as  absolutely  wrong  and  unworthy. 
But  we  are  then  only  giving  emphatic  utterance  to  the  class- 
consciousness  within  us.  A  member  of  another  group  may 
declare  himself  quite  otherwise  with  equal  vehemence  and 
conviction.    This  is  his  way  as  ours  was  our  way. 

But  although  in  Nietzsche's  way  of  viewing  the  matter 
there  can  be  no  question  of  the  absolute  validity  of  any  code, 
nevertheless  codes  may  be  judged  according  to  the  type  of 
character  which  they  express  and  which  they  tend  to  con- 
serve and  promote.  Its  moral  code  is  the  most  powerful 
means  by  which  any  given  group  maintains  its  solidarity, 
preserves  its  existence,  and  disseminates  its  own  quality  of 
Ufe. 


iS6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Nietzsche  himself  is  interested  not  in  the  code  of  any  na- 
tion or  race  but  in  the  codes  of  two  classes  of  mankind  that 
he  thinks  appear  and  reappear  in  all  historical  epochs,  the 
masterful  class  and  the  servile  class.     These  two  classes  repre- 
sent not  the  accidents  of  historical  conflict,  but  the  deeper 
instinctive  difference  between  what  the  modern  psychologist 
would   call   positive   self-feeling   and   negative   self-feeling. 
Positive  self -feeling  is  the  ''  yes ''-attitude  to  life,  the  attitude 
of  aggressiveness  and  self-reliance,  the  attitude  of  those  who 
are  healthy  and  fit.     Negative  self-feeling  is  the  ''no "-atti- 
tude, the  attitude  of  shrinking  and  timidity,  the  attitude  of 
those  who  are  weak  and  poorly  endowed.     The  former  class 
instinctively  takes  the  lead,  asserts  and  feels  its  superiority; 
the  latter  class  instinctively  follows  the  lead  and  knows  its 
master's  voice.^    Each  of  these  classes  has  its  own  code. 
The  code  of  the  masters  is  that  which  Nietzsche  seeks  to 
promote,  and  the  positive  teachings  which  we  shall  consider 
below  constitute  his  elaboration  of  it.     Suffice  it  to  say  here 
that  it  is  the  code  which  has  always  been  more  or  less  com- 
pletely observed  by  the  aristocratic  class  —  the  code  which 
praises    bold    action,    openness   of  mind,    fullness    of    life, 
courtesy,  and  loyalty.     It  is  the  code  of  the  cavalier  as 
opposed  to  the  code  of  the  puritan.     But  let  us  turn  first  to 
the  code  of  the  servile  or  slave  class. 

2.  The  Slave  Morality.  Nietzsche  was  at  one  time 
largely  under  the  influence  of  Schopenhauer.  Although  he 
came  eventually  to  a  general  view  of  life  which  was  almost 
the  antithesis  of  that  of  Schopenhauer,  Nietzsche  retained 
to  the  end  that  philosopher's  conception  of  the  orthodox 
European  morality.  According  to  Schopenhauer  morality 
is  essentially  repressive  and  self-denying.  It  leads  logically 
to  total  self-effacement  and  self-annihilation.  But  while 
Schopenhauer  preached  this  doctrine,  to  Nietzsche  it  is 
anathema.  It  is  the  common  and  in  a  sense  the  fundamen- 
tal morahty,  yes;  but  that  is  because  it  is  the  morality  of 
common  and  inferior  man.    It  is  the  morality  of  the  masses; 

*  Cf.  G.  Wallas:  Human  Nature  and  Politics. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


157 


the  herd-morality.     It  is  the  morality  of  those  who,  feeling 
their  individual  weakness  and  incompetence,  and  realizing 
instinctively  that  they  can  survive  only  if  they  band  to- 
gether, are  therefore  impelled  by  the  motive  of  self-preserva- 
tion to  exalt  those  qualities  of  restraint  and  submissiveness 
by  which  social  life  is  promoted.     Unable  to  deny  their 
personal  disabilities,  and  being  in  sore  need  of  indulgence, 
they  fall  to  praising  pity  and  benevolence.    Just  as  Tom 
Sawyer  who,  wishing  to  have  some  one  whitewash  his  fence 
for  him,  hinted  at  the  superlative  joys  of  whitewashing,  so 
the  miserable  folk  in  the  world,  needing  relief,  promote  the 
gospel  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  so  fine  as  to  relieve 
the  needy.    Indeed  they  go  so  far  as  boldly  to  proclaim  that 
their  very  disabilities,  their  weakness,  their  poverty,  their 
softness,  their  ignorance,  are  in  fact  not  disabilities  at  all  — 
but  the  highest  qualities  of  life;  although  of  course  they  call 
them  by  other  names,  such  as  simplicity,  gentleness  and  ten- 
derness.   Thus  the  masses  of  mankind,  prompted  like  every 
human  class  by  their  own  group  interest,  codifying  their  own 
peculiar  characteristics,  and  making  a  cult  of  them,  have 
actually  brought  man  to  the  ridiculous  and  suicidal  posture 
of  worshipping  his  own  defects.    It  is  this  spectacle  which 
excites  Nietzsche's  bitterest  contempt: 

"They  are  miserable,  there  is  no  doubt  about  it,  all  these  whis- 
perers and  counterfeiters  in  the  comers,  although  they  try  to  get 
warm  by  crouchmg  close  to  each  other,  but  they  tell  me  that  their 
misery  is  a  favor  and  distinction  given  to  them  by  God,  just  as 
one  beats  the  dogs  one  likes  best;  that  perhaps  this  misery  is  also 
a  preparation,  a  probation,  a  training;  that  perhaps  it  is  still  more 
something  which  will  one  day  be  compensated  and  paid  back  with 
a  tremendous  interest  in  gold,  nay  in  happiness.  This  they  call 
^Blessedness!'  ...  But  enough!  Enough!  I  can  endure  it  no 
longer.  Bad  air!  Bad  air!  These  workshops  where  ideals  are 
manufactured  —  verily  reek  with  the  crassest  lies."  ^ 

There  is,  Nietzsche  would  admit,  a  certain  indispensable- 
ness  in  the  herd-morality.  If  there  is  to  be  a  society  at  all 
there  must  be  a  social  mass  as  its  lowest  stratum.    And  the 

1  The  Genealogy  of  Morals^  §  14. 


158 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


social  mass  can  be  held  together  only  by  certain  elementary 
virtues.     But  Nietzsche  is  railing  against   that  excessive 
laudation  of  these  virtues  which  would  give  them  the  supreme 
place  in  the  scale  of  values.    Like  many  indispensable  things 
they  are  vulgar  and  primitive,  a  mere  base  on  which  the 
heroic  virtues  of  superior  men  may  be  erected.     And  he  con- 
demns these  lower  virtues,  it  must  be  remembered,  because 
he  beheves  that  the  class-type  which  they  express,  and  which 
they  exalt,  is  essentially  ignoble.     He  condemns  the  code 
because  of  the  ideal  which  it  promotes.     Such  a  code   he 
thmks,  is  a  sort  of  idolatry,  a  false  worship;  in  which  men 
admire  what  is  not  truly  admirable,  and  thus  not  only  have 
their  minds  perverted,  but  their  actions  degraded. 

3.  The  Assault  on  Christianity.  You  will  have  recognized 
that  those  features  of  the  orthodox  moral  code  which  Nie- 
tzsche  most  resents  are  those  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
associate  with  Christianity.  Nietzsche  himself  identified 
Christianity  with  the  cult  of  servile  moraHty,  and  attacked 
it  accordingly. 

^   A  recent  writer  on  Nietzsche,  J.  N.  Figgis,  in  a  book^  which 
IS  otherwise  admirable,  finds  Nietzsche  to  be  very  largely  in 
agreement  with  what  this  writer  regards  as  the  essence  of 
Chnstiamty.     Both  Christianity  and  Nietzsche,  he  contends 
are  opposed  to  the  ethics  of  utihty  and  exj^ediency,  and  to 
the  ethics  of  mere  duty.     Both  proclaim  that  the  value  of 
life  hes  m  the  triumphant  assertion,  in  and  through  suffering 
and  tragic  conflict,  of  one's  deeper  spiritual  nature.     But  I 
beheve  that  if  poor  Nietzsche  wants  to  be  the  enemy  of 
Chnstiamty  he  should  be  allowed  to  be.     I  am  always  ready 
to  intervene  in  behalf  of  the  exasperated  critic  whose  victim 
instead  of  turning  and  rending  him,  turns  and  agrees  with 
him.     Certainly  Nietzsche  did  his  best  to  make  the  conflict 
between  his  views  and  those  of  Christianity  quite  irreconcil- 
able.    As  we  have  already  seen  he  attacked  religion  in  general 
m  so  far  as  he  explicitly  and  unquaHfiedly  rejected  super- 
naturahsm.     He  then  went  on  to  attack  Christianity  in  par- 

«  The  WUl  to  Freedom. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


159 


ticular,  and  for  what  would  ordinarily  be  regarded  as  its 
most  unquestionable  merit,  for  its  conception  of  a  merciful 

Heavenly  Father. 

After  following  Nietzsche's  treatment  of  moral  codes  we 
shall  be  prepared  for  the  method  of  his  assault  on  Chris- 
tianity. It  is  not  in  the  least  a  question  of  the  existence  of 
God.  Nietzsche  takes  it  for  granted  that  God  does  not  exist, 
and  does  not  think  the  point  worth  arguing.  He  is  perfectly 
willing  that  men  should  worship  as  many  gods  as  they  please, 
provided  the  gods  they  conceive  are  worthy  of  worship. 

*' What  separates  us,"  he  says,  "is  not  that  we  do  not  rediscover 
any  God,  either  in  history  or  in  nature  or  behind  nature  —  but  that 
we  recognize  what  was  worshipped  as  God  not  as  '  divine,'  but  as 
pitiable,  as  absurd,  as  injurious  —  not  only  as  error,  but  as  crime 
against  life.  We  deny  God  as  God.  If  this  God  of  the  Christians 
were  proved  to  us,  we  should  still  less  know  how  to  believe  m  him. 
In  a  formula:  Deus  qualem  Pavlus  creavit,  Dei  negatio.'' 

The  God  of  Christianity,  in  other  words,  is  improperly  con- 
ceived. 

"When  everything  strong,  brave,  domineering  and  proud  has 
been  eUminated  out  of  the  concept  of  God,  when  he  sinks  step  by 
step  to  the  symbol  of  a  staff  for  the  fatigued,  a  sheet-anchor  for 
the  drowning  ones,  when  he  becomes  the  poor  people's  God,  the 
sinner's  God,  the  God  of  the  sick  par  excellence,  and  when  the 
predicate  of  Savior,  Redeemer,  is  left  as  the  sole  divine  predicate," 

—  when  God  is  so  conceived,  thinks  Nietzsche,  God  is  not 
exalted,  but  reduced  and  degraded.  The  Christian  God  is 
the  God  of  the  masses,  reflecting  their  characteristic  weak- 
nesses and  representing  their  low  level  of  aspiration.  He  is 
the  God  of  the  timid,  of  those  who  withdraw  from  life,  not 
feeling  equal  to  cope  with  it. 

"The  Christian  concept  of  God  —  God  as  God  of  the  sick,  God 
as  cobweb-spinner,  God  as  spirit  — is  one  of  the  most  corrupt 
concepts  of  God  ever  arrived  at  on  earth;  it  represents  perhaps 
the  gauge  of  low  water  in  the  descending  development  of  the  God 
type  God  degenerated  to  the  contradiction  of  life,  instead  of 
being  its  transfiguration  and  its  eternal  yeal    In  God  hostiUty 


i6o 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


l6l 


announced  to  life,  to  nature,  to  the  will  to  life,  God  as  the  formula 
for  every  calumny  of  'this  world,'  for  every  lie  of  'another  world.' 
In  God  nothingness  deified,  the  will  to  nothingness  declared 
holy!"^ 

As  in  the  case  of  the  slave-morqjity,  Christianity  is  con- 
demned  not  for  the  falsity  of  its  doctrinal  assertions,  but  for 
its  effect  upon  its  adherents,  or  for  its  effect  upon  humanity 
through  the  ignoble  following  which  it  attracts  and  puts  in 
power.  Just  as  the  Darwinian  finds  that  civilization  inter- 
feres with  natural  selection,  so  Nietzsche  finds  that  Chris- 
tianity tends  to  excuse  incompetence,  lower  standards,  and 
negate  aspiration.  It  is  the  most  powerful  enemy  of  that 
ideal  of  human  eminence  and  perfection  which  is  the  positive 
feature  of  Nietzsche's  teaching. 

III.     THE   NEW   GOSPEL 

^  I.  The  Spirit  of  Reform.  Nietzsche's  destructive  crit- 
icism was  only  incidental.  He  had  the  temperament  of  a 
reformer  and  prophet.  In  spite  of  his  acceptance  of  the 
teachings  of  science,  he  was  no  fatalist.  '^Mankind  does 
not  get  on  the  right  road  of  its  own  accord,"  he  said.^  He 
beUeved  in  evolution,  but  he  believed  that  it  must  be  kept 
up  and  directed  by  the  zeal  of  the  true  lovers  of  mankind. 
We  are  at  the  beginning  of  a  new  age,  when  the  teachings  of 
Socrates,  of  Christianity  and  of  the  French  Revolution  have 
run  their  course.  He  felt  himself  to  be  called;  to  be  in 
possession  of  a  new  truth  which  he  must  proclaim  and  for 
which  he  must  suffer. 

2.  The  WiU  to  Power.  The  essential  reality,  Nietzsche 
teaches,  is  a  will  to  power.  Will  is  not,  as  Schopenhauer 
would  have  it,  a  mere  appetite  for  something  which  the  exter- 
nal world  may  give  or  withhold;  a  craving  which  must  always 
remain  unappeased  because  essentially  dependent  on  the 
caprice  of  fortune.  It  is  an  expansion  from  within,  that  is 
limited  only  by  the  degree  of  its  own  force  and  exuberance. 

>  These  passages  are  from  Antichrist,  316,  260-262.    They  are  cited  by 
Figgis,  op.  ctt.  ■'  ^ 

2  Ecce  Homo,  93,  I.     Cf.  Will  to  Power,  §  979. 


Life  is  not  only  a  will  for  expansion,  for  growth  from  more  to 
more,  but  it  is  an  instinct  for  mastery  and  superiority.  It  is 
not  enough  for  will  merely  to  exist.  Nietzsche  transcends 
both  the  Darwinian  conception  of  life  as  a  struggle  for  bare 
existence,  and  the  Spencerian  idea  that  it  is  mere  adaptation 
to  conditions  imposed  from  without : 

"A  plurality  of  forces  bound  by  a  common  nutritive  process  we 
call  'Life.'  .  .  .  Life  is  not  the  continuous  adjustment  of  internal 
relations  to  external  relations,  but  will  to  power,  which,  proceeding 
from  inside,  subjugates  and  incorporates  an  ever-increasing  quan- 
tity of 'external 'phenomena.  .  .  .  The  only  reality  is  this;  the  will 
of  every  centre  of  power  to  become  stronger  —  not  self-preservation, 
but  the  desire  to  appropriate,  to  become  master,  to  become  more, 
to  become  stronger."  ^ 

'  3.  Hardness.  It  is  a  condition  of  the  realization  of  the 
will  to  power,  that  a  man  should  have  the  heart  to  see  it 
through.  One  of  the  most  frequently  quoted  and  generally 
repellent  sayings  of  Nietzsche  is  the  following:  ''This  new 
table,  O  my  brethren,  I  put  over  you:  'Become  hard!'"^ 
But  though  its  meaning  is  bad  enough,  let  us  not  misun- 
derstand it.  It  does  not  mean  that  the  man  of  power  will 
be  malicious  or  consciously  cruel  in  the  sense  of  enjoying  the 
sufferings  inflicted  on  others.  That  would  be  a  kind  of  in- 
verted sympathy,  in  which,  though  in  a  sense  opposite  to 
that  which  we  think  commendable,  one  would  nevertheless 
be  affected  by  the  feelings  of  others.  Nietzsche  teaches,  on 
the  contrary,  that  the  strong  man  will  not  be  governed  by 
the  feelings  of  others,  but  by  his  own  will  to  mastery.  He 
will  be  hard  in  the  sense  that  he  will  assert  himself  without 
scruple.  Nietzsche  thought  of  sympathy  as  a  weakness,  by 
which  man  allows  his  resolutions  to  waver.  You  cannot  be 
masterful  if  you  are  perpetually  troubled  about  the  way  the 
under-dog  feels;  you  cannot  excel  if  you  are  painfully  aware 
of  how  disagreeable  it  is  to  the  other  man  to  be  surpassed. 
The  strong  man  will  be  bUthesomely,  carelessly,  inhuman. 
He  will  enjoy  his  superiority  and  press  his  advantage  with  a 

1  The  Will  to  Power,  §§  641,  681,  689. 

2  Zarathustra,  318-319. 


1 62 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


thoroughly  good  conscience.  He  will  occupy  whatever  place 
in  the  sun  he  is  big  enough  to  fill,  and  will  be  superbly  in- 
different to  the  fact  that  he  may  be  crowding  his  neighbor. 
Without  such  hardness,  Nietzsche  would  say,  we  must  be 
forever  apologizing,  shrinking,  and  waiting  for  others  to 
precede,  with  the  result  that  life  is  never  anywhere  fully 
expanded. 

The  same  idea,  traceable  to  Nietzschean  influence,  appears 
in  the  following  passage  from  Strindberg: 

**When  we  grow  strong  as  were  the  men  of  the  first  French 
revolution,  then  we  shall  receive  an  unconditionally  good  and 
}oyi\A  impression  from  seeing  the  national  forests  rid  of  rotting 
and  superannuated  trees  that  have  stood  too  long  in  the  way  of 
others  with  equal  right  to  a  period  of  free  growth  —  an  impression 
good  in  the  same  way  as  that  received  from  the  death  of  one  in- 
curably diseased.  ...  I  find  the  joy  of  life  in  its  violent  and  cruel 
struggles,  and  my  pleasure  lies  in  knowing  something  and  learning 
something."  ^ 

In  other  words,  society  needs  perpetually  to  be  pruned  and 
weeded.  The  unfit  must  make  way  for  those  in  whom,  as  in 
the  healthy  trees  of  the  forest,  humanity  may  be  more  ad- 
equately represented.  For  this  pitilessness,  like  that  of  the 
surgeon,  is  a  merit,  and  not  a  defect. 

Closely  connected  with  this,  is  the  more  familiar  teaching 
that  true  greatness  is  bred  only  by  conflict,  and  that  without 
hardness  conflict  cannot  be  sustained.  Nietzsche  does  not 
preach  a  **  peace  without  victory."  On  the  contrary  the 
strong  man  is  the  man  who  presses  his  advantage  until  he 
overcomes,  and  who  relishes  the  victory  when  he  wins  it. 
Nietzsche  understood  well  the  wastefulness  and  fatuousness 
of  war.  But  he  regarded  militarism  as  superior  to  most 
forms  of  modern  life.     He  consistently  admired  in  Germany, 

1  Author's  Preface  to  "Miss  Julia,"  Plays,  trans,  by  Edwin  Bjorkman, 
Vol.  II,  p.  98.  The  plays  of  this  period  for  the  most  part  centre  in  a  struggle 
for  mastery.  Such  is  the  case,  for  example,  with  "Miss  Julia,"  in  which  the 
valet  conquers  the  daughter  of  the  noble  house;  "The  Stronger,"  dealing 
with  the  struggle  between  two  women  for  the  love  of  a  man;  and  "  Pariah," 
the  struggle  for  personal  ascendency  between  the  two  guilty  and  mutually  sus- 
picious scholars. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


163 


S 


not  the  commercial  classes,  but  that  very  officer-caste  of  the 
army  whom  we  to-day  most  bitterly  reproach.^  And  though 
he  had  no  sympathy  with  nationalism  for  its  own  sake,  and 
was  as  free  as  a  man  can  be  from  patriotic  bias,  nevertheless 
he  saw  in  the  war-like  nation  the  only  hope  of  escaping  his 
pet  aversions,  utilitarianism  and  democracy. 

*'The  maintenance  of  the  military  state,"  he  said,  "is  the  last 
means  of  adhering  to  the  great  tradition  of  the  past,  or,  where  it 
has  been  lost,  to  revive  it.  By  means  of  it  the  superior  or  strong 
type  of  man  is  preserved,  and  all  institutions  and  ideas  which 
perpetuate  enmity  and  order  of  rank  in  states,  such  as  national 
feeling,  protective  tariffs,  etc.,  may  on  that  account  seem  justified."^ 

4.  The  Aflarmation  of  Life.  Of  one  thing  Nietzsche  can- 
not be  justly  accused.  He  did  not  seek  the  easy  or^  the 
pleasant  way  of  life.  He  despised  every  species  of  utilitar- 
ianism and  eudaemonism.  He  who  affirms  life  must  have  a 
stomach  for  it  as  it  is  —  the  bitter  with  the  sweet. 

"The  highest  state  to  which  a  philosopher  can  attain,"  he  says, 
is  "to  maintain  a  Dionysian  attitude  to  life  —  my  formula  for  this 
is  amor  JatiJ^^ 

There  is  in  Nietzsche  an  almost  morbid  determination  to 
exult  in  suffering.  The  man  of  power  will  not  complain. 
He  will  say  of  pain  or  any  misfortune  ''I  like  it,''  ''Give  me 
more,"  like  one  who  gratuitously  and  deliberately  bites  on  a 
sore  tooth.  Indeed  it  has  been  suggested  that  Nietzsche's 
philosophy  of  life  was  perhaps  in  part  the  result  of  his  pro- 
longed sufferings  from  toothache,  and  from  his  struggle  to 
bear  with  it.'*  But  the  meaning  of  his  teaching  is  not  morbid. 
It  means,  as  does  that  gospel  of  life  for  life's  sake  of  which  I 
shall  speak  later,^  that  he  who  pretends  to  love  life,  and  to 
value  power  above  material  possession  or  subjective  satis- 

>  Cf.  e.g.,  The  Genealogy  of  Morals^  p.  14. 

2  The  Will  to  Power,  §  729. 

3  Ibid,,  §  1041- 

*  Figgis:  Op.  ciL,  p.  70. 
»  Cf.  below,  pp.  341-347. 


164 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


faction,  must  have  a  sort  of  magnificent  heartiness  of  appe- 
tite, a  relish  for  the  rough  edge  of  life,  for  life  as  it  is,  rather 
than  for  carefully  selected  or  tempered  portions  of  it. 

This  motive  in  Nietzsche  finds  its  noblest  and  most  ex- 
travagant expression  in  his  doctrine  of  ^ ^Eternal  Recurrence." 
Although  time  is  infinite,  the  energies  or  dynamic  agencies  in 
nature  are  finite,  so  that  only  a  limited  number  of  natural 
combinations  is  possible.  Since  each  such  combination  is 
determined  by  its  antecedent  in  the  series,  —  there  is  a  circu- 
lar or  periodic  movement  in  which  every  situation  recurs 
infinitely  many  times.  This  idea  contradicts  the  belief  in 
straightforward  and  permanent  progress,  and  is  initially  re- 
pugnant to  the  mind.  But  with  Nietzsche  it  is  an  appeal  to 
that  grim  courage  which  exults  in  life  as  it  is.  To  bear  this 
dreadful  prospect,  to  greet  each  recurrent  event  with  the 
joyful  cry  "Once  again,'* ^  —  this  is  the  supreme  test  of  the 
masterful  spirit.  The  doctrine  of  recurrence  gives  a  kind  of 
immortal  dignity  to  all  that  is;  and  enables  man  to  live  as 
though  all  he  did  were  eternal. 

In  this  doctrine  Nietzsche's  thought  reaches  its  most 
metaphysical  and  religious  level.  The  following  passage 
will  serve  to  indicate  his  mood: 

"If  I  am  fond  of  the  sea,  and  of  all  that  is  of  the  sea's  kin,  and 
if  I  am  fondest  if  it  contradicteth  me  angrily; 

If  that  seeking  lust  is  within  me  that  driveth  the  sails  after 
the  undiscovered;  if  there  is  a  sailor's  lust  in  my  lust; 

If  my  rejoicing  hath  ever  cried:  'The  shore  hath  disappeared! 
Now  the  last  chain  hath  fallen  from  me! 

The  limitless  roareth  round  me!  Far,  far  away  shine  unto  me 
space  and  time !    Up!    upward,  old  heart ! 

Oh!  how  could  I  fail  to  be  eager  for  eternity  and  for  the  mar- 
riage ring  of  rings,  the  ring  of  recurrence? 

«       «       *       *       « 

Fofr  I  love  thee,  0  Eternity V^  ^ 


»  Werke.  VI,  461. 

^  Thus  Spake  Zarathtistrat  p.  344. 


THE   GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


165 


IV.    SOCIAL  AND   POLITICAL  IMPLICATIONS 

It  remains  only  to  consider  certain  implications  of  Nie- 
tzsche's philosophy  that  bear  more  directly  upon  the  great 
questions  in  dispute  in  the  present  war. 

It  is  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  Nietzsche's  teaching  that 
although  he  is  radical  in  his  ethics  and  religion,  he  is  a  con- 
servative in  his  political  and  social  philosophy.  The  ex- 
planation of  the  paradox  is  not  difficult.  The  orthodox 
morality  of  to-day  is  humanitarian.  The  interest  of  hu- 
manitarianism  is  in  the  relief  of  the  unprivileged  and  the 
unfortunate.  Humanitarianism  moves,  whether  consciously 
or  not,  steadily  toward  political  and  social  equality.  But  in 
this  movement  it  encounters  the  existing  system,  in  which 
inequality  is  articulated,  legalized  and  fostered.  It  in- 
evitably attacks  that  system  as  a  whole  or  in  part,  with  a 
view  to  removing  handicaps  and  restrictions,  and  opening 
the  way  for  those  who  lag  in  the  rear.  So  that  political  and 
social  radicalism  are  only  an  outgrowth  and  application  of 
the  oldest  and  deepest  moral  sentiments  of  Christendom. 
These,  however,  are  the  very  sentiments  which  Nietzsche 
repudiates.  His  repudiation  of  them  gives  him  the  aspect 
of  a  moral  anarchist,  of  something  new  and  dreadful  and 
shocking  to  the  moral  sensibilities.  But  many  of  the  appli- 
cations of  his  moral  philosophy  would  suit  the  most  reac- 
tionary Bourbon  among  us. 

I.  Class  Subordination.  The  essence  of  the  matter  is 
that  believing  in  the  cultivation  of  superiority,  he  is  every- 
where an  advocate  of  authority.  Instead  of  equalizing  the 
differences  among  men  we  should  acknowledge  them,  pro- 
mote them,  and  legalize  them.  Instead  of  being  all  on  one 
plane,  as  the  democrats  would  have  it,  society  should  be  a 
pyramid  or  flight  of  steps,  a  Rangordnung,  with  differences 
of  elevation  clearly  marked.  Although  the  higher  men,  in 
whom  the  ideal  of  humanity  is  realized,  must  only  voice  their 
will  in  accents  of  command,  the  mass  of  mankind  have 
humbly  to  obey.  Their  present  restiveness  under  the  yoke 
is   to   be   condemned.    Doubtless    the   "will    to   power " 


i66 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


prompts  them  to  it,  but  they  must  be  held  in  check  by  the 
more  potent  will  to  power  exercised  by  their  superiors.  They 
'have  no  political  rights  since  political  authority  emanates 
from  above  and  not  from  below,  being  founded  on  force 
rather  than  on  contract.  The  family,  Hke  the  state,  is  a 
dominion  founded  on  the  centralized  responsibility  of  the 
head.  The  present  tendency  to  sentimentalize  marriage 
and  rest  it  on  an  "idiosyncrasy  "  like  love,  is  only  one  more 
proof  of  the  weakening  of  authority.^ 

But  Nietzsche  is  not  a  reactionary  in  the  sense  that  he 
values  authority  merely  because  it  is  established  and  tradi- 
tional. He  values  it  in  principle.  It  so  happens  that  the 
innovating  and  liberating  movements  of  the  age  express  a 
levelUng  tendency  which  he  beUeves  calculated  to  vulgarize 
and  degrade  humanity.  Therefore  he  is  opposed  to  them. 
He  IS  a  convinced  aristocrat,  and  not  an  aristocrat  from  tem- 
perament, habit  or  training.  He  is  an  idealistic  aristocrat 
in  the  same  sense  that  Plato  was,  because  he  believes  that 
only  in  a  society  so  graded  and  scaled  can  the  highest  type 
of  Hfe  be  reaUzed.  So  thoroughly  are  we  indoctrinated  with 
democratic  and  humanitarian  teachings  that  it  requires  some 
effort  on  our  part  even  to  understand  Nietzsche.  But  the 
effort  is  worth  while,  even  if  it  results  only  in  a  clearer  con- 
viction of  the  extent  to  which  Nietzsche's  influence  challenges 
and  menaces  those  ideals  that  we  most  warmly  cherish. 

In  order  that  there  shall  be  superiors,  he  says  in  effect, 
there  must  be  inferiors.     Society  culminates  in 

"the  synthetic  man  who  embodies  everything  and  justifies  it  .  .  . 
for  whom  the  rest  of  mankind  is  but  soil  on  which  he  can  devise  his 
higher  mode  of  existence.  He  is  in  need  of  the  opposition  of  the 
masses,  of  those  who  are  levelled  down';  he  requires  that  feeling 
of  distance  from  them;  he  stands  upon  them,  he  lives  on  them."  ^ 

The  social  pyramid,  narrow  and  elevated  at  the  top,  re- 
quires a  broad  base  at  the  bottom.  The  masses  of  mankind 
are  to  be  regarded  as  a  pedestal,  to  support  what  is  above 

*  Salter:  Op.  ciU,  p.  422. 

2  The  Will  to  Power,  §  866.    Cf.  §  954. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


167 


» 


them.  If  superior  men  are  to  look  down  from  their  eminence, 
there  must  be  those  whose  role  it  is  to  be  looked  down  upon, 
and  who  for  their  own  part  must  be  satisfied  with  looking  up. 
If  those  at  the  bottom  should  strive  to  ascend,  it  is  evident 
that  the  pyramidal  form  of  society  would  be  destroyed. 
Therefore  they  must  be  encouraged  to  keep  their  place,  even 
to  the  extent  of  fostering  among  them  that  very  slave- 
morality  which  Nietzsche  so  much  despises.  At  the  top  of 
the  pyramid  are  the  emancipated,  the  intellectuals  in 
whom  humanity  recognizes  its  highest  self-expression.  Like 
the  philosopher-guardians  of  Plato's  Republic  they  combine 
superlative  capacity  with  the  control  and  direction  of  the 
affairs  of  mankind.  But  they  do  nothing  themselves.  That 
would  be  beneath  their  dignity  and  would  compromise  their 
freedom  and  self-sufficiency.  The  practical  business  of 
ruling  is  done  for  them  by  the  next  class  beneath  them,  by 
the  statesmen  and  higher  warriors,  a  sort  of  glorified  General 
Staff.  Below  these  are  the  great  mass  of  those  who  engage 
in  business,  in  the  industrial  or  mechanical  arts,  and  in 
manual  labor. 

The  essence  of  the  matter  is  that  the  whole  social  pyramid 
exists  for  the  sake  of  the  apex.  Some  of  you  may  have  seen 
the  upper  part  of  the  Washington  Monument  illuminated  by 
a  searchlight  at  night.  The  pointed  summit  of  the  monu- 
ment shines  high  up  in  the  sky,  apparently  unsupported  by 
the  innumerable  tiers  of  blocks  that  lie  below.  So  for  Nie- 
tzsche's ideaUzing  consciousness  it  is  only  the  pointed  summit 
of  the  social  structure  that  shines  with  the  radiance  of  per- 
fection. The  State  is  "Nature's  roundabout  way  of  making 
a  few  great  individuals."  The  vast  substructure  of  toiling 
and  suffering  mankind  is  essential  to  the  elevation  to  which 
these  superb  beings  have  attained.  But  their  part  is  sub- 
ordinate and  inglorious.  For  one  who  has  gained  the  true 
perspective  and  learned  the  true  scale  of  values,  they  fall 
within  the  unnoticed  foreground  of  attention  where  they  are 
suitably  shrouded  in  the  darkness  of  the  lower  air. 

2.  Cosmopolitanism.  Nietzsche,  like  the  socialists,  is 
opposed  to  the  cult  of  nationalism,  and  for  the  same  reason. 


i68 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


[ 


The  socialist  says  that  the  proletariat  has  no  fatherland; 
Nietzsche  would  say  that  the  true  aristocracy  has  no  father- 
land. Like  the  socialists  Nietzsche  was  the  advocate  of  a 
class,  and  not  of  any  particular  race  or  state.  He  sought  to 
promote  a  certain  type  of  manhood  wherever  and  whenever 
conditions  permitted. 

In  other  words,  if  Nietzsche's  influence  is  cast  for  Germany, 
as  I  beHeve  it  is,  then  at  any  rate  it  is  not  because  of  any 
appeal  to  national  partisanship,  but  because  Germany  wills 
that  which  would  in  Nietzsche's  judgment  be  of  greater  value 
than  what  is  willed  by  her  enemies.  It  is  not  in  a  mere 
struggle  for  territory,  it  is  not  in  commercial  rapacity,  that 
this  will  is  to  be  found,  but  in  that  claim  of  dominion  that 
comes  from  a  conviction  of  innate  superiority.  There  is  as 
good  a  "right  "  to  aggression  as  there  is  to  self-preservation. 

"A  people  ought  at  least  with  quite  as  much  justification,  to  be 
able  to  regard  its  lust  of  power,  either  in  arms,  commerce,  trade,  or 
colonization,  as  a  right  —  the  right  of  growth,  perhaps.  .  .  .  When 
the  instincts  of  a  society  ultimately  make  it  give  up  war  and  re- 
nounce conquest,  it  is  decadent:  it  is  ripe  for  democracy  and  the 
rule  of  shopkeepers."  ^ 

Now  there  is  a  type  of  pan-Germanist  who  like  Nietzsche 
denounces  wealth  and  pleasure,  and  who  like  Nietzsche 
thinks  these  to  be  the  pecuHar  preoccupations  of  the  ignoble 
Englishman.  Himself  he  feels  to  be  of  another  substance, 
exalted  above  other  races,  and  therefore  justified  in  seizing 
and  holding  that  higher  place  to  which  his  quahty  entitles 
him.  Nietzsche  would  wait  long  before  acquiring  apter 
pupils. 

Nietzsche  is  a  professed  cosmopolitan.  His  heroes  were 
men  of  all  the  world  rather  than  local  or  merely  national 
figures.  He  proposed  that  we  should  "fearlessly  style  our- 
selves good  Europeans,  and  labor  actively  for  the  amal- 
gamation of  nations."  2  His  superior  class  was  to  be  an 
international  aristocracy.     But  we  must  not  forget  that  he 

1  The  Will  to  Power,  §  728. 

2  Human,  All-Too-Human,  §  475.    Cf.  his  Peoples  and  Countries. 


J 


P 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


169 


was  no  sentimental  or  philanthropic  internationalist.  It  was 
from  no  thought  of  extending  like  opportunities  and  privi- 
leges to  all  humanity.  Nor  was  it  from  any  idea  of  dissemi- 
nating the  spirit  of  peace  and  brotherly  love.  Conflict  in 
some  form  he  felt  to  be  necessary,  since  there  is  no  other 
means  by  which 

"the  rough  energy  of  the  camp,  the  deep  impersonal  hatred,  the 
cold-bloodedness  of  murder  with  a  good  conscience,  the  general 
ardour  of  the  system  in  the  destruction  of  the  enemy,  the  proud 
indifference  to  great  losses,  to  one's  own  existence  and  that  of  one's 
friends,  the  hollow,  earthquake-like  convulsion  of  the  soul,  can  be 
as  forcibly  and  certainly  communicated  to  enervated  nations."  ^ 

He  realized  the  wastefulness  of  it,  in  the  destruction  both 
of  man  and  of  his  works,  but  felt  that  civilization  needed  to 
be  reinvigorated  by  barbarism.  It  was  not  that  he  shrank 
from  war,  but  from  the  pettiness  of  narrow  national  aspira- 
tions. He  simply  felt,  as  the  socialists  feel,  that  most  inter- 
national war  is  wasteful,  since  it  is  waged  upon  trifling 
issues.  Let  the  superior  men  of  all  nations  unite  their 
efforts.  Let  them  fight  side  by  side  in  the  assertion  and  pro- 
tection of  their  own  superiority  against  the  inundating  tide 
of  mediocrity.  Thus  does  Nietzsche  meet  the  challenge  of 
socialism,  and  sound  his  answering  and  defiant  trumpet  in 
that  dormant  class  war  whose  deeper  rumbHngs  can  even 
now  be  heard  amidst  the  active  eruption  of  the  war  of 
nations.^ 

3.  The  Superman.  Nietzsche  is  not  an  egoist  in  any 
vulgar  sense.  We  may  perhaps  accept  the  distinction  of 
Simmel,  who  says:  "Egoism  desires  to  have  something,  Per- 
sonaHsm  desires  to  be  something."  ^  In  this  sense  Nietzsche 
is  certainly  a  personaHst  rather  than  an  egoist.  His  motive 
is  not  one  of  greed,  but  of  aspiration  toward  what  he  deems 
a  higher  type  of  humanity.     To  this  higher  type,  viewed  as 

^  Human,  All-too-Human,  §  477-     Cf.  442,  444- 

2  There  is,  of  course,  a  paradox  in  all  this.  The  extreme  socialists,  or 
syndicalists,  might  as  a  minority-class  of  men  of  action,  be  thought  to  represent 
the  true  aristocracy.    Cf.  below,  p.  341. 

3  Schopenhauer  und  Nietzsche,  245.    Qu.  by  Figgis,  op.  cit.,  p.  71. 


1 70 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  goal  of  evolution,  he  gives  the  name  of  "Superman" 
( tjbermensch) . 

There  is  considerable  difference  of  opinion  as  to  whether 
Nietzsche  literally  intended  the  evolving  of  a  new  species  re- 
lated to  man  as  man  is  related  to  his  simian  ancestors;  or 
whether  he  intended  merely  the  perfecting  in  a  few  chosen 
individuals  of  the  human  species  itself.  But  for  practical 
purposes  it  does  not  greatly  matter.^  In  any  case  he  meant 
to  look  forward  to  the  development  of  a  new  race.  Such  an 
end  he  thought  worthy  of  every  sacrifice.  To  this  end  every 
present  interest  must  be  subordinated;  and  for  its  reahzation 
every  means  which  history  and  science  suggest  is  to  be  em- 
ployed. The  Superman  is  to  be  bred  by  biological  selection 
after  the  manner  of  eugenics.  He  is  to  be  educated  by  being 
afforded  the  fullest  opportunity  of  development;  and  the 
whole  organization  of  society  is  to  be  adapted  to  his  nurture 
and  support.  Above  all  he  is  to  be  schooled  by  adversity 
and  conflict;  and  must  therefore  win  his  way  and  maintain 
himself  largely  by  his  own  efforts. 

Although  no  perfect  Superman  has  yet  appeared  in  history 
his  prototypes  are  to  be  found  in  the  world-conquer ers,  such 
as  Alexander  and  Napoleon,  in  the  wicked  heroes  such  as  the 
Borgias,  Wagner's  Siegfried,  and  Ibsen's  Brand,  and  in  the 
great  cosmopolitan  intellects  such  as  Goethe  and  Stendhal. 
These  were  the  gods  of  Nietzsche's  idolatry.  Their  Super- 
man-like quaUty  lay  not  only  in  their  genius,  but  in  their 
freedom  from  scruples.  They  rightly  felt  themselves  to  be 
above  the  law.  What  they  did  was  right  not  because 
sanctioned  by  any  law  beyond  themselves,  but  because  they 
did  it.  So  the  Superman  will  be  a  law  unto  himself.  What 
he  does  will  come  from  the  will  and  superabundant  power 
within  him.  Thus  the  Superman  may  be  generous,  even 
compassionate  and  sympathetic,  provided  it  flows  from 
strength  and  not  from  weakness.^ 

In  Nietzsche's  Superman,  as  in  Aristotle's  Highminded 

1  For  a  discussion  of  this  question,  cf.  Simmel:  op.  cil.,  and  Doraer:  Pessi- 
mismus,  Nietzsche  und  Naturalismus. 

2  Cf.  The  Will  to  Powers  II,  §§  330,  S^S*  379- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  NIETZSCHE 


171 


< 


\ 


Man,  there  is  an  air  of  superiority  that  somehow  mars  the 
perfection.  Here  is  lordUness  and  eminence  and  quahty 
enough  to  command  our  unquaUfied  admiration.  But  there 
is  an  unmistakable  flaw,  hard  to  detect,  like  a  delicate  nuance 
of  physiognomy,  and  yet  enough  to  make  the  difference  be- 
tween the  sublime  and  the  ridiculous.  The  flaw  consists,  I 
think,  in  the  accompanying  consciousness,  the  inner  attitude 
of  the  Superman.  Not  only  is  he  superior,  but  he  knows  it, 
and  he  doesn't  care  who  else  knows  it.  He  is  thoroughly 
and  unpleasantly  satisfied  with  himself.  Like  everybody 
else  he  cannot  stand  success. 

I  know  of  no  better  evidence  of  this  weakness  of  the  Super- 
man than  the  contrast  presented  between  the  Superman  and 
Nietzsche  himself.  The  latter,  despite  the  errors  and  ex- 
cesses of  his  teaching,  is  a  commanding  and  admirable  figure. 
This,  I  think,  is  because  he  suffered  and  struggled.  We  feel 
him,  we  of  the  herd-morality,  to  be  one  of  us  in  that  he  knew 
hardship  and  failure,  but  to  be  better  than  most  of  us  in  that 
he  wore  himself  out  for  disinterested  ends.  But  the  Super- 
man is  one  who  has  arrived.  He  has  no  remote  goal,  no 
greater  cause,  to  give  himself  to.  He  can  only  sit  and  medi- 
tate upon  his  own  greatness;  or  walk  out  upon  a  balcony  and 
survey  with  disdain  the  clamoring  multitude  below;  or 
occasionally  give  orders  to  have  some  impudent  uprising 
suppressed.  The  mass  of  suffering  and  failure  in  the  world 
is  as  great  as  ever,  but  it  is  no  concern  of  his.  It  is  all  justi- 
fied in  that  it  has  put  him  where  he  is.  But  however  mag- 
nificent he  is  we  cannot  admire  him.  It  is  not,  I  think,  be- 
cause we  envy  him.  It  is  because  we  feel  that  a  man  who 
finds  himself  so  at  ease  and  so  comfortable  in  his  conscience, 
when  pain  and  death  and  despair  abound,  can  be  no  more 
than  a  spoiled  child  or  a  pompous  prig. 

There  is  the  same  difference  between  the  Germany  of  a  cen- 
tury ago  and  the  Germany  of  to-day.  The  nationaUstic  as- 
pirations of  a  beaten  and  suffering  people,  reclaiming  their 
liberties  by  heroic  and  self-sacrificing  efforts,  is  admirable. 
But  a  bloated  and  arrogant  Empire,  ostentatiously  successful, 
and  having  no  longer  anything  to  live  for  but  to  expand  itself 


172 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


and  sound  its  own  praise,  this  we  feel  is  not  great  but  child- 
ish and  vain. 

It  comes  back  in  the  end,  I  think,  to  this:  that  so  long  as 
there  is  evil  in  the  world,  in  any  recess  or  corner  of  it,  man- 
kind had  better  postpone  the  occasion  of  self -congratulation. 
The  perfecting  of  a  favored  few  at  the  expense  of  their  fel- 
lows may  be  a  noble  work  of  love  and  sacrifice  on  the  part  of 
those  who  pay  the  cost,  but  those  who  like  Nietzsche's 
Supermen  accept  the  sacrifice  as  only  what  their  superiority 
deserves,  will  have  deceived  themselves.  They  will,  in  fact, 
be  less  than  the  least  of  those  who  serve  them. 


1 


CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  APPEAL  TO   MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  FACTS 

Thus  far  we  have  been  examining  these  creeds  and  codes 
of  our  time  which  have  been  formed  chiefly  under  the  in- 
fluence of  science;  some  of  them  inspired  by  the  physical  and 
mechanical  view  of  nature,  some  by  the  example  and  achieve- 
ment of  scientific  method,  some  by  certain  new  ideas,  such  as 
society  and  evolution  to  which  science  has  recently  given 
vogue.  Science  is  innovating  and  radical,  and  its  great 
power  in  recent  times  has  given  to  our  age  that  general 
transitional  character  which  we  ascribed  to  it  at  the  opening 
of  our  study.  Although  in  some  cases  science  has  seemed  to 
reinstate  and  confirm  the  traditional  moral  code  it  has  in- 
variably discredited  the  metaphysical  and  religious  founda- 
tions on  which  that  code  is  ordinarily  supposed  to  rest,  and 
whose  support  it  is  ordinarily  supposed  to  require.  Thus 
Huxley,  for  example,  would  have  us  do  our  duty  in  the  same 
old  way,  but  without  ascribing  to  duty  any  central  signifi- 
cance in  the  world  at  large;  and  while  the  socialists  would 
still  proclaim  the  brotherhood  of  man  they  would  omit  that 
fatherhood  of  God  which  many  would  regard  as  the  neces- 
sary and  indispensable  sequel.  It  is  in  its  bearings  on  the 
spiritualistic  metaphysics,  on  the  belief  that  the  mental  and 
moral  things  are  first  in  the  order  of  reality,  that  the  in- 
fluence of  science  has  invariably  been  innovating  and  radical. 

This  influence,  as  might  have  been  expected,  has  been 
stoutly  resisted.  The  spiritualistic  metaphysics  has  not 
only  survived  in  old  forms,  but  has  forged  new  weapons  with 
which  to  champion  the  cause  of  the  old  religious  beliefs 
against  the  menace  of  science.  In  so  far  as  old  orthodox 
beUefs  have  merely  continued  to  exist  by  inertia  and  habit, 
or  through  the  repetition  of  old  arguments,  they  do  not  con- 
cern us  here.     We  shall  confine  ourselves  to  those  revivals 

173 


174 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


of  the  spiritualistic  metaphysics  in  which  there  is  something 
of  novelty,  or  at  any  rate  something  that  is  distinctly  char- 
acteristic of  the  times.  We  shall  find  it  convenient  to  discuss 
this  group  of  tendencies  under  three  heads.  First,  we  shall 
consider  the  appeal  to  moral  and  religious  facts  as  affording 
a  basis  for  faith.  Second,  we  shall  examine  certain  rather 
miscellaneous  phases  of  idealism,  such  as  Phenomenalism, 
Panpsychism,  and  Personal  Idealism,  having  some  logical 
connection  with  one  another,  but  distinguished  chiefly  by 
the  absence  of  that  positive  speculative  motive  which  dis- 
tinguishes Absolute  Idealism.  Third,  we  shall  examine 
Absolute  Idealism  as  being  the  greatest  of  these  spiritualistic 
philosophies,  and  as  having  played  a  major  role  in  present 
events  through  its  appUcation  in  the  German  philosophy  of 
the  state. 

In  the  present  chapter  we  turn  to  the  first  of  these  topics, 
the  appeal  to  moral  and  religious  facts.  We  have  already 
seen  that  the  application  of  the  scientific  method  to  the 
fields  of  morals  and  religion  has  had  the  effect  of  emphasizing 
the  unmistakable  existence  and  the  vast  area  of  these  fields. 
Whatever  you  may  make  of  it,  it  is  less  possible  now  than  it 
ever  was  before,  to  deny  that  man  is  moral  and  that  man  is 
religious.  Even  science  has  strengthened  this  conviction. 
But  there  have  been  other  forces,  no  less  potent.  Chief 
among  these  is  that  emotional  intensification  of  moral  and 
religious  convictions  which  is  due  to  propaganda  and  or- 
ganized appeal.  In  addition  to  this  there  is  that  which,  for 
lack  of  a  better  understanding,  we  must  term  the  natural, 
periodic  revival  of  moral  and  religious  zeal,  in  which  after 
stretches  of  relative  apathy  the  pendulum  swings  back  again. 
There  would  seem  to  be  a  sort  of  psychological  law  by  which 
laxity  accumulates  forces  of  remorse  that  eventually  break 
out  in  waves  of  reform  and  renewed  faith.  The  periodic  re- 
turn to  good  government  in  New  York  City  and  to  Catholi- 
cism in  France,  are  instances  of  what  I  mean. 

The  great  war,  as  might  have  been  expected,  has  stimu- 
lated the  whole  range  of  human  emotions  and  sentiments. 
If  in  some  cases  it  appears  to  have  intensified  the  baser  in- 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   FACTS 


I7S 


i 


stincts,  in  other  cases,  and  more  unmistakably,  it  has 
strengthened  the  appeal  of  conscience  and  the  grip  of  old 
religious  beliefs.  The  war  has  made  many  men  more  vigor- 
ously dutiful,  more  tenderly  humane,  more  buoyantly  con- 
fident, or  more  tenanciously  loyal.  Thus  the  facts  of  moral 
and  religious  experience  have  been  revivified  and  freshly 
apprehended  in  our  day,  and  new  importance  therefore 
attaches  to  their  interpretation.  For  we  are  concerned  here 
not  so  much  with  the  facts  themselves  as  with  their  use  for 
the  purpose  of  justifying  a  spiritualistic  view  of  the  world. 

I.    MORALISM 

By  "moralism''  I  mean  viewing  the  world  through  the 
medium  of  the  moral  consciousness;  regarding  moraUty  as 
the  central  fact  in  the  world,  and  construing  the  world  ac- 
cordingly. Moralism,  in  other  words,  is  not  being  moral 
simply,  but  interpreting  the  world  as  morahty  suggests  or 
seems  to  require. 

The  firmest  dogmatism  of  the  present  age  is  its  moral  dog- 
matism. By  this  I  mean  holding  firmly  to  conscience  and 
its  promptings,  without  seeking  further.  Every  older  dogma 
abandoned  has  meant  a  larger  adherence  to  the  moral  dogma, 
as  when  at  sea  one  life-boat  after  another  sinks,  those  that 
remain  become  more  crowded.  In  so  far  as  men's  confidence 
in  the  Scriptures,  or  in  miracles,  or  in  the  authority  of  the 
church,  has  been  shaken,  they  have  climbed  aboard  the  raft 
of  morality.  In  so  far  as  science  has  shaken  the  older  theistic 
arguments  by  which  God  was  proved  from  the  book  of  nature, 
men  have  turned  to  morality  as  the  last  support  of  a  faltering 
faith.  The  classic  example  of  this  is  the  rise  of  what  is 
known  as  Deism,  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  This  aimed 
to  be  a  religion  without  mystery  or  supernaturalism,  a  re- 
Ugion  consistent  with  the  utmost  freedom  of  thought,  inde- 
pendent of  inspiration  and  authority.  It  rested,  more  and 
more  heavily,  upon  the  supposed  immutable  and  self-evident 
dictates  of  conscience.  Voltaire  was  both  the  most  de- 
structive critic  and  the  most  unhesitating  moral  dogmatist 
to  which  the  movement  gave  rise.     This  tendency  to  fall 


176 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS   FACTS 


177 


back  upon  the  line  of  moral  entrenchments  when  the  meta- 
physical or  institutional  first-line  trenches  become  untenable 
is  perhaps  pecuHarly  characteristic  of  the  French  and  Anglo- 
Saxon  minds.  At  any  rate,  such  is  the  contention  of  Nie- 
tzsche, who  says  that  when  Englishmen  give  up  the  Christian 
creed  they  are  not  logical  enough  to  give  up  the  code  that 
goes  with  it.  The  war  has  given  rise  both  in  France  and  in 
England  to  a  great  revival  of  conscience.  In  both  countries, 
though  in  characteristically  different  ways,  patriotism  has 
assumed  the  form  of  a  moral  revival.  In  England,  in  par- 
ticular, the  old-fashioned  moral  prejudices  were  largely,  per- 
haps mainly,  responsible  for  the  voluntary  recruiting  of  three 
million  men. 

MoraKsm  assumes  several  quite  different  forms  which  it  is 
worth  while  to  distinguish. 

n.  THE  CODE  OF  CONSCIENCE  AND  THE  RULE  OF  GOD 

To  many  persons,  especially  in  Protestant  countries, 
morality  signifies  a  set  of  prohibitions.  Duty  is  a  sort  of 
taboo,  restraining  men  from  the  performance  of  certain  acts 
to  which  nature  prompts  them.  It  is  a  sort  of  sumptuary 
legislation,  proscribing  card-playing,  dancing,  theatre-going, 
or  the  indulgence  of  physical  appetites.  It  is  a  moderate, 
half-hearted  revival  of  the  old  Christian  asceticism.  It 
consists  in  the  possession  of  a  set  of  powerful  scruples  that 
thwart  the  expression  of  natural  impulses.  This  is  what  in 
our  own  tradition  is  called  ''the  New  England  conscience," 
though  its  centre  of  distribution  is  now  somewhat  nearer 
the  Mississippi  Valley.  It  is  usually  associated  with  the 
teachings  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  especially  with  the 
Lutheran  and  Calvinistic  revivals  of  Old  Testament 
theology. 

But  this  view  of  conscience  is  closely  associated  with  a 
certain  view  of  the  world.  Nature  is  regarded  as  scanda- 
lous; and  man,  since  nature  is  a  part  of  his  inheritance,  is 
necessarily  sinful  and  undeserving.  Since  man  deserves 
nothing,  the  severity  of  God  is  justified;  and  his  grace  being 
gratuitous  is  not  claimed  as  a  right,  but  humbly  and  grate- 


I 


fully  received  as  pure  bounty.  More  fundamental  than  this 
is  the  idea  of  the  moral  government  of  the  world.  Conscience 
of  this  sort  is  codified;  it  consists  of  statutes  and  commands. 
There  must  be  a  God,  because  there  must  be  a  Ruler  with 
universal  jurisdiction  over  men.  Conscience,  the  ''stern 
daughter  of  the  voice  of  God,''  is  the  medium  by  which  God's 
commands  are  made  known  to  his  subjects.  Conscience 
speaks  imperatively  and  authoritatively  and  demands  un- 
hesitating and  unreasoning  obedience.  Human  suffering 
cannot  be  held  to  be  a  grievance,  since  man  in  any  case  de- 
serves the  worst,  nor  does  it  afford  any  ground  for  failure  to 
do  one's  duty.  Duty  is  necessarily  painful  in  any  case,  since 
it  goes  against  the  grain  of  nature.  Nor  are  moralists  of 
this  type  disturbed  in  their  worship  by  the  spectacle  of  the 
cruelties  which  God  permits,  since  God  is  worshipped  not 
for  his  lovableness  but  rather  for  his  stern  justice  and  his 
unshakable  power. 

in,    MORAL  SELF-DETERMINATION  AND   INDIVIDUALISM 

A  very  different  conception  of  conscience  is  implied  in  the 
notion  of  "the  individual  conscience,"  or  "liberty  of  con- 
science." This  too  is  Protestant  rather  than  Catholic  in  its 
Christian  sources.  It  is  connected  with  the  teaching  that  a 
man  may  search  the  Scriptures  for  himself  and  save  his  soul 
without  the  intervention  of  the  Church.  A  more  advanced 
form  of  the  same  thing  is  to  be  found  in  Locke's  idea  of  toler- 
ance, according  to  which  the  individual's  judgment  must 
not  be  coerced.  Church  and  state  being  separated,  moral 
and  religious  teachings  must  be  left  to  the  art  of  persuasion. 
The  same  teaching  is  reinforced  and  finds  its  chief  support 
to-day  in  Anglo-Saxon  individuahsm,  which  would  in  all 
possible  ways  make  each  reasoning  man  independent  and 
self-sufficient. 

This  idea  is  the  key  to  the  "conscientious  objector,"  a 
phenomenon  peculiar  to  England  and  America,  and  the 
occasion  of  much  wonderment  even  to  our  French  allies. 
The  rights  of  the  conscientious  objector  are  based  on  the 
right  of  every  man  in  moral  matters  to  make  up  his  own  mind. 


178 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


There  is  no  moral  truth,  according  to  this  idea,  save  such  as  is 
achieved  by  conscientiously  thinking  it  out  for  yourself. 
There  are  no  moral  authorities,  with  any  infallible  higher 
insight.  To  reach  and  to  disseminate  truth  it  is  therefore 
important  that  each  individual  should  be  encouraged  to  use 
his  own  reason.  When  an  individual  conscientiously  reaches 
a  conclusion  contrary  to  the  present  need  or  interest  of  the 
community,  the  situation  is  essentially  tragic.  However 
fantastic  the  objector's  judgment  may  appear  to  the  majority 
of  his  fellows,  there  is  something  sacred  in  it  just  because  it 
is  his  judgment.  If  the  state  coerces  him,  then  having  his 
own  high  sanction,  more  authoritative  than  any  external 
instrumentality  such  as  the  state,  he  is  entitled  to  the 
dignity  of  martydom. 

There  is,  furthermore,  an  ideal,  as  well  as  a  principle  at 
stake.  The  highest  type  of  life  is  the  individual  who  is 
answerable  only  to  himself,  whose  supreme  rule  of  conduct 
is  to  abide  by  the  canons  of  his  own  code.  To  be  a  man  of 
honor,  to  be  a  man  of  one's  word,  to  be  true  to  one's  self 
whatever  the  cost,  is  to  be  a  man,  or  at  any  rate  an  English- 
man. With  this  norm  of  conduct  there  is  associated  a  view 
of  the  world  in  which  the  spiritual  centre  tends  to  be  shifted 
from  God  to  the  human  personality.  If  there  be  a  God  he 
must  be  conceived  so  as  not  to  compromise  the  dignity  of  in- 
dividual moral  beings.  If  God  be  worshipped  he  must  Him' 
self  be  similarly  endowed.  If  God's  existence  be  doubtful, 
then  the  autonomous  moral  agent  remains  as  the  rock  on 
which  a  spiritual  faith  may  be  founded. 

"Out  of  the  night  that  covers  me, 
Black  as  the  pit  from  pole  to  pole, 
I  thank  whatever  Gods  may  be 
For  my  unconquerable  soul. 

«  «  «  4t  * 

It  matters  not  how  strait  the  gate, 
How  charged  with  pimishments  the  scroll, 
I  am  the  master  of  my  fate: 
I  am  the  captain  of  my  soul."  * 
^  Henley's  Invictus. 


I 


' 


c 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS   FACTS 
IV.    ALTRUISM  AND  OPTIMISM 


179 


A  third  version  of  conscience  finds  expression  in  the 
familiar  idea  that  the  essence  of  moral  obliquity  is  selfish- 
ness, the  essence  of  right  conduct  unselfishness.     To  be  bad 
is  to  be  hard  or  self-indulgent;  to  be  good  is  to  be  com- 
passionate or  self-sacrificing.     This  view,  in  other  words, 
identifies  conscience  with  a  specific  sentiment;  or,  if  we  are 
to  credit  McDougall's  acceptance  of  the  "tender  emotion" 
even  with  a  specific  instinct.     Conscience  is  the  better  part 
of  human  nature,  contending  against  the  baser.     With  this 
philanthropic  morality   we   have   already  met.     Its   most 
conscious  expression  since  the  French  Revolution  has  been 
in  the  philanthropic  type  of  socialism,  in  that  socialism  which 
is  concerned  with  giving  rather  than  getting.     But  it  has 
found  an  even  wider  expression  in  what  we  now  call  "social 
service  ";  and  the  sentiment  of  humanity  which  moves  men 
to  act  in  behalf  of  the  rights  of  small  nations.     That  this 
type  of  conscience  has  in  our  day  reasserted  itself  with  re- 
newed vigor  will  not  be  denied.     It  is  appealed  to,  especially 
in  France,  as  a  finality,  as  the  highest  principle  by  which  to 
judge  the  conduct  of  men  and  the  policy  of  nations. 

The  altruistic  conscience  may  through  emphasis  on  the 
motive  of  pity  be  reconciled,  as  in  the  case  of  Jansenism, 
with  the  belief  in  original  sin,  and  the  helpless  depravity  of 
man.  But  it  is  more  naturally  and  more  logically  connected 
with  the  idea  that  men  are  like  children,  in  being  the  innocent 
victims  of  circumstance;  deserving  to  be  happy,  and  only 
prevented  by  the  artificial  cruelty  of  institutions.  Such  a 
view  inclines  all  of  the  moralists  of  kindliness,  as  it  incHned 
Rousseau  and  Shelley,  to  a  belief  that  nature  is  beneficent 
and  good,  only  civilization  being  vile.  Good  is  inherently 
more  powerful  than  evil,  it  being  necessary  only  to  remove 
barriers  in  order  that  it  shall  prevail.  Man's  humane  im- 
pulses are  deeper,  more  significant  of  the  cosmic  order  than 
his  baser  impulses.  Religion  is  a  deepening  of  these  gentler 
feehngs  into  a  love  of  God,  who  manifests  himself  in  the 
graciousness  and  beauty  of  nature.  So  feeling,  rather  than 
reason  or  will,  is  the  root  both  of  morals  and  of  religion. 


i 


i8o 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


The  altruistic  conscience  in  its  recent  reawakening  has 
also  undoubtedly  given  a  new  support  to  Christianity,  thus 
partially  offsetting  the  loss  which  Christian  apologetics  have 
suffered  through  the  weakening  of  the  older  theistic  meta- 
physics. Even  Catholicism  has  in  certain  quarters  allied 
itself  with  socialism;  or  with  the  teaching  that  the  state  must 
protect  the  individual  from  the  abuses  of  the  competitive 
economic  system.^  **The  very  existence  of  Catholic  social- 
ism," thinks  Brunetiere,  "shows  that  there  is  something  of 
idealism  at  the  basis  of  all  socialism."^  -q^^  ^q  might  equally 
well  say  that  it  shows  that  there  is  something  of  altruism  in 
Catholic  Christianity;  and  that  it  therefore  derives  rein- 
forcement from  every  kindHng  of  the  sentiment  of  humanity. 
Similarly  the  Tolstoyan  pacifism  and  love  of  humble  men 
has  stimulated  a  revival  of  primitive  Christianity;  while  in 
a  wider  sense  the  participation  of  the  Christian  churches  in 
the  new  campaign  of  social  service  has  brought  them  new 
recruits  with  which  to  replace  losses  due  to  the  decline  of  the 
dogmas  and  doctrines  of  the  orthodox  creed. 

V.    KANTIAN  FORMALISM 

Finally,  we  have  to  consider  a  version  of  conscience  that  is 
primarily  philosophical  in  its  origin,  but  which  has  lent 
countenance,  if  it  has  not  directly  caused,  certain  practical 
attitudes  and  policies  characteristic  of  our  day.  I  refer  to 
Kant's  doctrine  of  the  "categorical  imperative.''  We  have 
within  us,  says  Kant,  a  faculty  which  has  special  and  final 
jurisdiction  over  conduct.  This  practical  reason ^  though 
universal  in  its  validity,  is  present  in  each  individual  con- 
sciousness, so  that  in  a  sense  each  individual  is  his  own  moral 
ruler.  The  right  act  is  whatever  act  this  practical  reason 
affirms.  Whatsoever  I  do  with  the  conviction  that  it  is  in 
keeping  with  the  laws  binding  on  all  moral  agents,  whatever 
I  do  in  this  sense  conscientiously,  is  ipso  facto  right. 

*  Cf.,  e.g.,  the  Bishop  of  Mainz,  and  M'g'r  de  Kelleter  in  Germany,  Cardinal 
Manning  in  England  and  Cardinal  Gibbons  in  this  country.  Cf.  Socialism 
and  Religion,  Fabian  Socialist  Series,  No.  i. 

2  The  Renaissance  of  Idealkm. 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  FACTS 


l8l 


Such  ethics  may  be  called  ''formalistic,"  in  the  sense  that 
what  determines  the  rectitude  of  the  act  is  not  its  conse- 
quences or  effects,  but  the  form  or  principle  under  which 
the  agent  subsumes  the  act  in  his  own  mind.  Thus,  if  I  feed 
a  starving  man  and  save  his  fife,  the  act  is  right  not  because 
of  what  happens  to  the  starving  man,  but  because  I  perform 
the  act  out  of  respect  for  the  general  law  that  we  should  re- 
lieve brothers  in  distress.  If  I  was  moved  to  the  act  by  the 
natural  incUnation  of  pity,  that  too  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  rectitude  of  the  act.  Doing  one's  duty  has  nothing  to  do 
either  with  the  consequences  of  acts,  or  with  one's  natural 
inclinations.  It  is  altogether  a  question  of  a  stern,  cold, 
judgment  within  the  agent  himself.  If  he  pays  too  much 
attention  to  consequences  his  act  declines  to  the  level  of 
expediency  and  loses  its  moral  value  altogether.  If  he  lets 
himself  be  swayed  by  his  inclinations,  he  is  the  slave  of  nature 
and  is  not  exercising  that  autonomy,  that  self-mastery,  of 
which  his  moral  ^^  freedom  "  consists. 

Now  formalism  may  be  entirely  innocuous  when  it  is  allied 
with  traditionalism.  Kant  himself  owing  to  his  pietistic 
training  and  inheritance  practised  a  plain  homespun  morality 
such  as  any  orthodox  Protestant  community  would  approve. 
His  own  personal  edition  of  the  practical  reason  was  edited; 
it  took  over  bodily  that  code  of  justice,  honesty  and  benevo- 
lence by  which  social  well-being  is  assured. 

But  Kant's  theory,  like  the  theories  of  many  gentle  ped- 
ants, was  logically  of  the  most  menacing  character  imagi- 
nable. It  implied  that  a  man  might  justify  his  act  by  its 
inward  accord  with  reason,  whatever  its  consequences.  To 
see  the  full  significance  of  this  teaching  we  have  to  imagine 
a  man  of  wholy  different  moral  habits  from  those  of  Kant,  a 
man  like  Nietzche's  Superman,  let  us  say,  entirely  emanci- 
pated from  traditional  social  morahty.  He  may  then  enter 
upon  a  course  of  conduct  entirely  subversive  of  the  public 
interest,  and  his  course  is  completely  justified  provided  only 
his  reason  approves  what  he  does.  He  may  proceed  to  in- 
jure and  destroy  with  all  the  solemnity  and  conviction  of  one 
who  believes  himself  to  be  doing  his  duty.     You  may  reply 


l82 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  FACTS 


183 


that  no  man's  reason  will  prompt  him  to  such  a  course  of 
action.  But  why  not?  Where  is  the  guarantee?  In  so 
far  as  the  formaUstic  principle  is  adopted,  one  ceases  to  con- 
sider consequences,  and  one  hardens  oneself  even  against 
the  promptings  of  one's  natural  humanity.  One  may  even 
come  to  regard  such  hardness  and  indifference  to  conse- 
quences as  a  proof  of  one's  uncompromising  adherence  to 
duty.  The  more  ruthless  one's  action,  the  more  rigorous 
one's  morality. 

Virtue  being  thus  divorced  from  all  content,  from  those 
specific  precepts  and  sentiments  which  conduce  to  social 
welfare,  these  may  readily  be  replaced  by  other  precepts  and 
sentiments.  It  is  easy,  for  example,  to  find  any  course 
reasonable  and  dutiful,  that  is  in  accord  with  one's  personal 
interest.  Nothing  is  more  natural,  more  humanly  probable 
than  that  a  man  should  thus  deceive  himself  and  harness  his 
conscience  to  his  greed  or  ambition. 

Or  the  precepts  of  social  beneficence  may  be  replaced  by 
the  commands  of  the  state.  Formahsm  in  ethics  breeds 
submissiveness  to  authority.  It  accustoms  the  will  to  the 
acceptance  of  rules  of  conduct  that  are  contrary  to  the 
natural  feelings,  and  that  are  indifferent  to  human  happiness. 
What,  then,  is  more  natural  than  that  conscience  should 
come  bodily  to  adopt  the  rulings  of  the  poUtical  authorities 
as  the  course  of  duty?  When  this  is  done,  when  the  moral 
agent  imposes  on  himself  by  force  of  conscience  whatever 
the  state  enacts,  then  the  tyranny  and  unscrupulousness  of 
the  state's  action  is  not  only  ignored  and  unchecked,  but 
receives  a  powerful  reinforcement  from  the  moral  motives 
of  the  community.  Tyranny  is  called  *' freedom,"  and 
unscrupulousness  is  called  ''righteousness." 

I  should  not  thus  enlarge  upon  the  practical  implications 
of  Kantian  formahsm  did  I  not  beheve  that  this  logic  has 
played  an  important  part  in  the  events  of  the  day,  and  given 
in  the  name  of  Kant  a  moral  name  to  practices  which  the 
human  impulses  and  a  considerate  regard  for  social  well- 
being  must  unqualifiedly  condemn.^ 

^  Cf.  below,  pp.  419-421,  431. 


But  we  are  here  concerned  also  with  the  metaphysical  and 
religious  sequel  to  formahsm.  Here  Kant's  thought  is  both 
original  and  of  far-reaching  influence.  It  is  the  most  clean- 
cut  instance  of  morahsm,  of  a  view  of  the  world  determined 
by  moral  necessities,  that  modern  thought  affords. 

According  to  Kant  it  is  impossible  to  know  the  real  world. 
The  objects  ordinarily  treated  in  rehgions  —  God,  the  soul 
and  the  future  Kfe  —  He  beyond  the  limits  of  knowledge,  be- 
cause they  lie  beyond  the  limits  of  experience.  But  there 
is  a  way  of  reaching  them  none  the  less,  the  way  oi  faith. 
Now  by  ''faith "  Kant  does  not  mean  beheving  wantonly 
and  capriciously,  but  in  such  definite  ways  as  are  prescribed 
by  one's  moral  nature.  Thus,  for  example,  as  a  moral  agent 
one  proceeds  to  one's  duty  quite  regardless  of  the  considera- 
tions of  happiness.  Nevertheless,  one  cannot  so  proceed 
without  beheving  that  since  virtue  deserves  well,  it  will  in 
the  long  run  be  crowned  with  happiness.  But  to  believe 
this  is  to  believe  in  a  being  governed  by  a  moral  purpose  and 
powerful  enough  to  direct  the  course  of  cosmic  affairs  so  as 
to  harmonize  them  with  moraUto.  Such  a  being  is  God. 
There  is  no  evidence  or  proof  of  his  existence  in  the  sense 
acceptable  to  science.  But  if  one  is  a  moral  agent,  and  does 
one's  duty,  one  cannot  but  believe  in  God. 

Similarly,  there  is  no  doing  one's  duty  without  beheving 
oneself  free  to  do]  it,  free  from  the  exclusive  dominion  of 
natural  laws;  and  there  is  no  possibiUty  of  aspiring  to  moral 
perfection  without  beheving  that  through  immortaUty  one 
will  have  an  opportunity  commensurate  with  the  task. 

So  the  whole  edifice  of  religious  beUef  is  based,  according 
to  Kant,  on  one's  needs  as  a  spiritual  being.  Kant's  idea  is 
one  of  the  great  stimulating  ideas  in  modem  religious  thought. 
Kant  himself  gave  an  exclusively  moral  turn  to  it.  But  it 
may  be  generalized  and  appUed  in  other  forms.  It  amounts 
to  a  new  logic  of  behef.  As  regards  ultimate  things,  where 
facts  are  inaccessible,  we  must,  according  to  this  new  logic, 
believe  as  our  deeper  needs  dictate.  What  we  have  to  be- 
lieve in  order  to  be  true  to  ourselves,  in  order  to  supply  Ufe 
with  the  necessary  incentive,  background,  or  presupposition, 
that  will  be  our  religion  and  our  view  of  the  world. 


1 84 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


VI.    THE  RELIGIOUS   EXPERIENCE 

The  motives  which  lead  to  revivals  of  religious  zeal  are 
largely  inscrutable.  There  is  no  type  of  human  character 
more  inexplicable  in  its  force  and  influence  than  that  of  the 
founder  of  new  religious  movements.  I  know  of  no  psy- 
chology that  explains  Mary  Baker  Eddy  or  Joseph  Smith. 
It  is  almost  equally  difficult  to  explain  the  conversion  of  in- 
dividuals to  reverent  credulity.  With  some,  as  perhaps 
with  Huysmans,  religion  comes  as  ^'a  seasoned  dish  to  a 
jaded  palate,"  with  others  it  is  the  death-bed  repentance 
of  an  uneasy  conscience.  But  on  the  whole  the  con- 
version of  Blake  and  Strindberg  to  Swedenborgianism 
remains  as  mysterious  as  the  power  of  Mother  Eddy  and 
Apostle  Smith  to  convert  thousands  to  Christian  Science 
and  Mormonism. 

There  has  been  no  lack  in  our  day  of  religiosity,  that  is,  of 
religious  sentiment  and  experience.  While  the  war  may 
have  seemed  to  discredit  the  religion  of  progress  and  human- 
ity, it  has  given  fresh  strength  to  the  religion  of  renunciation 
and  other-worldiness.  Religion  of  the  latter  type  seems 
better  justified  than  ever  in  its  contention  that  man  cannot 
be  saved  through  his  own  efforts  or  by  any  merely  secular 
achievement.  Above  all  fresh  impetus  has  been  given  to  the 
religion  of  suffering.  This  religion  regards  suffering  as  an 
opportunity  for  spiritual  trial  and  growth,  in  which  the  soul 
is  quaHfied  for  a  higher  form  of  existence  beyond  the  grave. 
The  French  Catholic  writer  Paul  Claudel  describes  a  French 
farmer  of  the  time  of  the  Hundred  Years  War  who  had  been 
strangely  spared  the  pillage  and  bereavement  which  were 
the  common  lot.  Instead  of  congratulating  himself  he  fell 
to  wondering  how  he  could  have  offended,  that  God  should 
not  have  tried  him  too.  So  he  leaves  his  property  and  family 
behind  and  goes  upon  a  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem  in  order  that 
through  hardship  and  exile  his  courage  and  resignation  may 
be  proved.  It  is  in  this  spirit  that  many  Catholic  French- 
men have  met  the  cruelties  and  havoc  of  the  present  war, 
notably   the   briUiant  young  men   of   letters,   Peguy  and 


MORAL  AND  RELIGIOUS  FACTS 


185 


Psichari,  both  of  whom  died  in  battle.  To  them  war  was  a 
supreme  spiritual  opportunity  in  which  they  might  suffer 
and  die  nobly,  and  like  true  martyrs  achieve  an  extraordi- 
nary  exaltation  of  devotion  and  purity.^ 

Mysticism,  too,  lives  on  as  hardily  as  ever,  as  though  ex- 
pressing a  permanent  strain  in  human  nature.  This  form 
of  the  rehgious  experience  thrives  without  the  church  as  well 
as  within.  It  is  a  potent  factor  in  modern  literature,  where 
its  greatest  exponent  is  perhaps  Maeterhnck.  In  the  preface 
to  his  collected  plays,  written  in  1908,  this  writer  analyzes 
the  beauty  of  a  work  of  art  as  follows: 

"First,  the  beauty  of  language,  then  the  impassioned  view  and 
portrayal  of  what  exists  about  us  and  in  us,  that  is,  nature  and 
our  sentiments,  and  lastly,  enveloping  the  whole  work  and  form- 
ing its  atmosphere,  the  idea  formed  by  the  poet  of  the  unknown 
in  which  the  beings  and  things  he  calls  forth  are  drifting,  and  of 
the  mystery  which  rules  and  judges  them  and  presides  over  their 
destiny."  ^ 

The  religious  experience,  then,  has  found  appropriate 
occasions  in  the  life  of  the  times.  But  there  is  nothing  new 
in  this.  What  is  new,  and  peculiarly  characteristic  of  our 
day,  is  the  study  of  this  phenomenon.  As  we  have  already 
seen,^  the  scientific  method  has  been  extended  to  the  field 
even  of  religion.  For  there  are  facts  there  as  well  as  else- 
where. Whatever  interpretation  may  eventually  be  put 
upon  these  facts,  the  anthropologist  and  psychologist  may 
describe  them,  and  the  sociologist  may  endeavor  to  ex- 
plain or  evaluate  them  in  terms  of  the  life  of  the  community. 
But  the  result  of  this  study  is  to  call  attention  to  the 
ubiquity,  and  the  unique  vividness  and  power,  of  the 
religious  life. 

A  notable  example  of  this  influence  is  afforded  by  William 
James's  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience.     The  title  in  itself 

1  Cf.  A.  Schinz:  "The  Renewal  of  French  Thought  on  the  Eve  of  the  War," 
American  Journal  of  Psychology,  Vol.  XXVIII  (1916),  pp.  310-313.  This 
article  shows  a  trend  towards  Catholicism  and  Mediaevalism  among  French 
literary  men  just  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 

2  Quoted  by  Flaccus,  Artists  and  Thinkers,  p.  39. 
'  Cf.  above,  pp.  67-69. 


1 86 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


is  most  expressive,  as  signifying  that  religion  is  to  be  studied 
as  an  assemblage  of  psychological  facts.  But  this  book  has 
done  much  more  than  satisfy  scientific  curiosity.  It  has 
quickened  and  promoted  the  religious  life.  This  effect  has 
been  due  largely  to  the  directly  moving  and  contagious  power 
of  the  religious  biographies  unfolded.  But  it  has  been  due 
even  more  to  the  attitude  of  the  author.  He  says  in  effect, 
**  These  experiences  are  just  as  genuine  as  any  experiences. 
Do  not  be  prejudiced  because  those  who  had  them  were 
neurotic  or  otherwise  queer.  To  those  who  had  them,  these 
experiences  were  just  as  convincing  as  your  perception  of 
external  nature.  Is  there  not,  perhaps,  a  certain  presump- 
tion in  favor  of  any  object  which  any  man  has  felt  to  be 
present  to  him?" 

In  other  words,  James  has  encouraged  us  to  credit  the 
content  and  the  claims  of  the  religious  experience.  And 
quite  apart  from  the  attitude  of  James  himself  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  a  familiarity  with  the  facts  of  religion,  and 
especially  with  the  more  vivid  and  exalted  moments  of  the 
religious  life,  inclines  the  mind  to  accept  religious  experience 
as  in  some  degree  objective.  Conversion  and  mystical 
communion  are  experiences  of  something  which  those  who 
have  these  experiences  call  *'God."  An  open-minded  re- 
ceptivity to  the  evidence  of  experience  would  seem  to  require 
that  these  claims  be  given  some  credit. 

William  James  is  also  largely  responsible  for  another  in- 
terpretation of  Religious  experiences,  to  which  we  shall  again 
return  in  discussing  pragmatism.^  Quite  independently  of 
its  truth  or  falsity  as  a  representation  of  objective  reality, 
religion  has  certain  specific  effects  upon  the  mind  of  the 
believer  himself.  In  so  far  as  it  promotes  the  contentment, 
serenity  and  optimism  of  the  individual,  it  may  be  said  to 
have  a  hygienic  value.  Although  religion  has  always  had 
such  values,  never  before  have  they  been  so  consciously 
recognized  and  exploited.  Thus  in  Christian  Science,  and 
in  the  "Immanuel  Movement,"  religion  is  deliberately  pro- 
moted as  an  instrument  of  mental  healing.     What  accession 

*  Cf.  below,  pp.  301-31 1. 


MORAL  AND   RELIGIOUS  FACTS 


187 


of  Strength  the  religious  view  of  the  world  has  thus  obtained, 
has  resulted  from  a  better  knowledge  of  the  facts  of  the  re- 
ligious life  itself  —  knowledge  of  its  relation  to  the  emotions 
and  will,  or  to  the  general  nervous  and  mental  organization 
of  the  individual. 


1 


CHAPTER  XIV 


PHENOMENALISM   AND   PANPSYCHISM 

We  have  seen  that  morality  and  religion  themselves,  as 
incontrovertible  facts  of  human  experience,  have  inclined 
men  to  adopt  the  spiritualistic  metaphysics  which  is  thought 
to  be  appropriate  to  them.  We  have  now  to  consider  that 
movement  of  thought  in  which  the  spirituaHstic  metaphysics 
is  systematically  established  on  its  own  proper  philosophical 
grounds.  This  is  philosophy's  direct  reply  to  naturalism, 
by  which  it  is  conceived  to  save  man  from  the  unwelcome 
practical  implications  of  triumphant  science. 

I.    PHENOMENALISM 

This  reply  to  naturalism  commonly  takes  as  its  point  of 
departure  a  view  to  which  I  shall  give  the  name  of  **  phenom- 
enalism." This  view  attacks  what  it  conceives  to  be  the 
essential  thesis  of  naturalism,  the  thesis,  namely,  that  all 
being  is  corporeal,  that  is,  either  matter  or  physical  energy. 
The  counter-thesis  of  phenomenalism  is  the  thesis  that, 
prima  facie,  so  far  as  given  in  experience,  all  being  is  mental. 
Whatever  is  immediately  present,  it  is  contended,  —  the 
data,  the  actual  scene  of  nature  and  history,  or,  to  use  Berke- 
ley's phrase,  *'the  whole  choir  of  heaven  and  furniture 
of  earth," — is  appearance- to- consciousness,  *^  representa- 
tion" or  **  content."  This  desk  before  us,  for  example, 
taken  just  as  it  appears,  is  essentially  a  something-perceived, 
a  percept.  When  we  look  into  our  minds,  we  find  it  there; 
hence  it  is  something  contained  in  mind,  or  mental  content. 
Or  it  is  something  appearing  to  us,  a  phenomenon ;  not  some- 
thing as  it  is  by  itself,  but  something  as  we  see  it. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  gauge  the  correctness  of  this  reason- 
ing here.     I  have  devoted  a  good  deal  of  space  to  it  else- 

i88 


PHENOMENALISM  AND   PANPSYCHISM 


189 


where.^  We  are  interested  here  in  considering  its  practical 
implications.  And  these  will  not  detain  us  very  long,  for 
as  nearly  as  I  can  discover,  it  has  none.  Its  only  importance 
lies  in  what  it  leads  to  in  the  way  of  further  philosophizing. 
Pragmatism  has  been  called  a  *' corridor  philosophy,"  in  the 
sense  that  a  good  many  different  philosophical  itineraries 
lead  through  it.  The  phrase  could,  I  think,  be  more  appro- 
priately appHed  to  phenomenalism.  Many  different  schools 
of  philosophy  traverse  it  together,  and  then  part  company 
just  before  they  make  the  interesting  inferences  and  draw 
the  moral. 

That  phenomenalism  in  itself  is  quite  indeterminate  and 
ambiguous  as  regards  morality  and  religion  is  most  clearly 
proved  by  the  fact  that  while  we  all  probably  associate  it 
with  a  spiritualistic  view  of  the  world,  it  is  as  a  matter  of  fact 
accepted  by  many  thinkers  who  hold  just  the  opposite  view; 
by  Hume,  for  example,  and  in  our  own  day  by  Huxley  and 
Karl  Pearson.^  These  writers  say  that  the  data,  the  given 
items  of  experience,  are  sensations;  that  the  hard  facts,  to 
which  science  has  to  appeal  in  the  last  analysis,  are  sensible 
facts.  But  they  then  go  on  to  maintain  that  the  only  hy- 
potheses that  fit  these  facts  are  those  mechanical  hypotheses 
that  are  formulated  by  physical  science.  The  concepts  of 
matter,  force  and  energy,  they  say,  are  the  only  means  by 
which  these  sensations  can  be  described  and  accounted  for. 
The  upshot  of  it  is  that  the  order  of  events  in  the  world  is  a 
mere  sequence  or  blind  necessity,  expressed  in  mathematical 
equations,  and  entirely  indifferent  to  values  or  aspirations. 
So  it  appears  that  for  moral  and  religious  purposes  it  makes 
no  difference  whatever  that  the  terms  or  items  of  experience 
should  happen  to  be  of  a  psychical  rather  than  of  a  corporeal 
character.  The  really  important  question  appears  to  be  the 
question  of  determination,  the  question  of  the  sort  of  causal 
principle  that  is  operative  in  the  world. 

In  order,  then,  to  reach  that  spiritualistic  metaphysics 
which  is  thought  to  justify  moral  endeavor  and  guarantee 

*  Cf.  Present  Philosophical  Tendencies,  pp.  126-134. 

'  Also,  more  or  less  qualifiedly,  by  Santayana  and  Bertrand  Russell. 


1 90 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


human  hopes,  it  is  necessary  to  go  beyond  phenomenalism. 
This  view  in  itself  is  incomplete.  Everything  depends  on 
how  it  is  rounded  out.  It  is  possible  to  distinguish  at  least 
four  views  of  this  more  complete  or  metaphysical  character 
that  may  be  said  somewhat  loosely  to  be  spiritualistic  rather 
than  naturalistic  in  their  tendency.  There  is  first  spiritualistic 
agnosticism,  which  would  give  a  spiritualistic  flavor  to  the 
unknown  substance  supposed  to  underlie  phenomena. 
Secondly,  there  is  panpsychism,  which  would  regard  the 
phenomena  themselves  as  a  sort  of  substance,  a  kind  of 
''mind-stuff,"  of  a  higher  or  lower  order.  Third,  there  is 
personal  idealism,  which  would  support  phenomena  by  sup- 
posing them  to  be  the  states  of  individual  souls  of  the  human 
or  superhuman  type.  Finally,  there  is  absolute  idealism 
which  supposes  the  whole  aggregate  of  phenomena  to  be 
supported  and  arranged  by  a  single  universal  mind.  In  the 
present  chapter  I  shall  briefly  discuss  the  first  two  of  these 
alternatives,  and  introduce  the  third  and  fourth  by  distin- 
guishing them  and  setting  forth  certain  broad  ideas  which 
they  have  in  common. 

II.    SPIRITUALISTIC  AGNOSTICISM 

Agnosticism,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is  the  view  that 
there  is  an  underlying  reality,  which  makes  itself  known  by 
its  effects,  but  which  never  shows  itself  in  its  own  true  char- 
acter. Reality  is  always  masked;  its  identity  remains  a 
perpetual  and  impenetrable  mystery.  In  spiritualistic 
agnosticism  this  unknown  reality  is  more  or  less  illicitly 
given  a  spiritual  character,  which  makes  us  feel  relatively  at 
home  and  safe  in  its  presence.  Of  course  if  one  were  a  strict 
agnostic  one  would  not  attribute  any  character  to  the  un- 
known. But  it  is  doubtful  if  there  is  any  such  thing  as  a 
strict  agnosticism.  To  assert  even  that  the  unknown  is 
there,  is  to  claim  some  knowledge  of  it;  and  once  you  have 
gone  that  far  there  is  no  insuperable  logical  obstacle  to  going 
further.  The  mind  abhors  a  blank,  just  as  nature  is  supposed 
to  abhor  a  vacuum;  and  when  the  blank  cannot  be  filled  by 
proper  scientific  evidence,  it  tends  to  be  filled  in  other  less 


PHENOMENALISM   AND   PANPSYCHISM 


191 


rigorously  intellectual  ways.  Thus  the  mind  tends  to  con- 
strue the  unknown  favorably,  to  give  itself  the  benefit  of  the 
doubt.  A  man  in  the  dark  will  allow  his  imagination  to 
invoke  objects  suggested  by  his  fears  or  his  hopes.  So  the 
agnostic  may  be  afraid  in  the  dark  or  he  may  feel  safe  in  the 
dark.  Feeling  afraid  in  the  dark  has  induced  what  we  call 
superstitious  dread,  a  sense  of  malignant  mystery.  But 
the  grown  man,  master  of  his  fears,  confident  of  his  powers, 
tends  to  construe  the  unknown  as  an  ally,  or  as  a  sympathetic 
and  approving  presence. 

This  favorable  version  of  the  unknown  may  be  thought  to 
rest  not  on  prejudice,  but  on  a  sort  of  moral  necessity.  The 
great  champion  of  this  view  is  Kant.  We  have  already 
seen  that  Kant  regards  certain  articles  of  faith  as  the  inevi- 
table sequel  to  performance  of  duty.  Believing  in  God, 
Freedom  and  Immortality  is  not  an  arbitrary  act,  as  you 
might  believe  in  a  lucky  horse-shoe,  but  it  is  believing  as  your 
moral  nature  compels.  Since  you  cannot  do  your  duty  with- 
out so  believing,  it  is  your  duty  so  to  believe.  But  if  the 
scientific  account  of  the  world  were  complete  and  final,  such 
belief  would  be  excluded.  So  Kant  limits  science,  as  he  says, 
to  make  room  for  faith.  This  room  left  for  faith  is  the  un- 
known. Science  deals  with  phenomena  or  appearances 
only.  Beyond  there  is  the  mystery,  inpenetrable  by  the 
methods  of  knowledge.  But  this  mystery  we  are  in  duty 
bound  to  construe  as  morality  requires;  and  so  the  void  of 
the  unknown  is  filled  by  God,  Freedom  and  Immortality. 

But  there  is  another  variety  of  spiritualistic  agnosticism 
which  is  more  in  favor  with  men  of  science.  We  start  once 
more  with  phenomenaUsm.  The  facts,  it  is  asserted,  are 
mental.  The  unknown,  then,  may  be  judged  by  its  appear- 
ances. It  is  the  kind  of  unknown  that  manifests  itself  in 
sensations.  That  being  the  case,  it  may  be  credited  with  a 
sort  of  kinship  to  mind.  All  that  we  know  about  it  is  mental. 
This  inference  seems  to  be  confirmed  by  the  recent  develop- 
ments of  physical  science.  I  have  said  that  there  is  a  nat- 
uralistic version  of  phenomenalism  in  which  it  is  contended 
that  the  only  explanation  of  the  order  of  sensations  is  by 


192 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


mechanical  hypotheses.  But  in  the  course  of  its  history  the 
aspect  of  mechanism  has  grown  less  forbidding  through  the 
increasing  emphasis  on  the  concept  of  energy.  So  long  as 
science  expressed  itself  in  terms  of  hard  impenetrable  matter 
it  seemed  utterly  ahen  to  the  spiritualistic  view  of  the  world. 
But  energy,  like  the  ether  or  centres  of  force  advocated  by 
other  physicists,  is  softer  and  less  forbidding.  It  is  im- 
possible to  speak  of  spiritual  matter,  but  it  is  the  easiest 
thing  in  the  world  to  speak  of  spiritual  energy,  or  even  of 
spiritual  force. 

Now  if  energy  explains  the  order  of  sensations,  it  must  be 
conceived  to  lie  farther  back  than  the  sensations,  closer  to 
the  unknown  source  of  things,  and  it  must  therefore  be  con- 
ceived to  reflect  this  unknown  more  directly.  So  we  may 
speak  of  the  unknown  as  *'  the  unknown  energy."  Of  course 
in  all  strictness  an  unknown  energy  is  not  in  the  least  energetic, 
any  more  than  an  Unknown  God  is  divine.  If  we  construe 
the  unknown  in  terms  of  the  physical  energy  of  science,  it 
ceases  to  be  unknown,  and  becomes  a  part  of  mechanical 
nature;  while  if  not  so  construed,  it  lapses  into  nothingness. 
But  such  is  the  power  of  words  that  an  ambiguity  like  energy, 
meaning  one  thing  in  science  and  another  thing  in  popular 
speech,  further  obscured  by  the  adjective  *' unknown,"  will, 
especially  if  spelled  with  a  capital,  afford  such  thinkers  as 
Haeckel,  Ostwald  and  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  all  the  gratifications 
of  a  hopeful  speculative  beUef. 

III.    PANPSYCHISM 

Another  passage  which  leads  out  from  this  corridor  of 
phenomenalism  bears  the  label  ^^Panpsychism."  This  doc- 
trine is  a  sort  of  mental  atomism,  mental  contents  being 
conceived  to  have  a  substantial  existence  by  themselves, 
instead  of  requiring  some  support  from  beyond.  In  the 
usual  view  we  think  of  mental  contents  either  as  appear- 
ances of  something,  or  as  states  of  something;  either,  for 
example,  as  the  appearances  of  the  unknown  reality  of  the 
agnostic,  or  as  the  states  of  a  person,  human  or  divine.  But 
in  panpsychism  these  bits  of  mind  belong  to  nothing.    They 


PHENOMENALISM  AND   PANPSYCHISM 


193 


are  neither  relations  nor  possessions.  They  are  just  them- 
selves, each  with  a  unique  qualitative  identity  of  its  own. 
All  other  realities  are  compounds  and  patterns  of  them.  An 
individual  mind,  instead  of  being  their  active  proprietor,  is 
simply  their  sum,  one  of  the  shifting  aggregates  or  flowing 
streams  in  which  they  unite. 

I.  The  View  of  Nature.  Panpsychism  is  best  known  by 
its  view  of  nature.  Instead  of  supposing  mind  to  begin 
somewhere  in  the  scale  of  Hfe,  and  life  to  begin  where  biology 
distinguishes  the  organic  from  the  inorganic,  this  doctrine 
proposes  to  carry  both  mind  and  Ufe  all  the  way  to  the  bot- 
tom. Everything  in  its  inward  essence  is  sentiency  or  feel- 
ing. The  argument  appeals  to  analogy  and  to  the  principle 
of  continuity.  Just  as  animals  and  men,  although  out- 
wardly physical  and  extended  in  space,  are  inwardly  made 
up  of  perceptions,  memories,  ideas  and  emotions,  so  one  may 
suppose  by  analogy  that  for  every  unit  or  element  of  nature 
there  is  a  corresponding  mental  life.  To  others  I  am  a  body, 
to  myself  I  am  a  consciousness.  I  know  how  it  feels  to  be 
myself.  So  there  is  a  way  it  feels  to  be  a  tree,  or  a  river  or  a 
mountain.  Everything  feels,  and  everything  is  what  it  feels 
to  be. 

By  the  principle  of  continuity  it  is  argued  that  as  we  move 
down  or  back  in  the  scale  of  nature  there  is  no  reason  for 
supposing  mind  ever  to  have  had  any  beginning.  In  animals 
one  finds  a  form  of  mind  appropriate  to  their  place  in  the 
scale,  not  the  same  as  the  human  mind,  but  mind  of  a  sort, 
none  the  less.  Among  the  lower  animals  mind  is  less  re- 
flective and  purposive,  more  like  crude  sensation  or  dumb 
craving,  but  it  is  still  mind.  Biologists  are  inclined  to 
recognize  in  the  tropism  of  plants  a  cruder  form  of  the 
same  thing.  When  therefore  we  pass  from  organic  to  in- 
organic phenomena,  instead  of  conceiving  mind  to  drop  out 
altogether,  we  may  conceive  it  to  exist  in  forms  that  are 
cruder  still.  The  argument  borrows  support  also  from  the 
psychologist's  recognition  of  a  subconscious  mental  life  that 
lies  outside  the  focus  of  attention,  or  below  the  threshold  of 
clear  consciousness,  or  disconnected  from  the  central  personal 


194 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


system  of  association  and  memory.  Further  plausibility  is 
given  to  the  view  by  the  vocabulary  of  physical  science,  with 
its  "affinities,"  *' attractions"  and  ''repulsions,"  making  it 
possible  for  a  writer  like  Haeckel  to  say  in  all  seriousness  that 

"the  irresistible  passion  that  draws  Edward  to  the  sympathetic 
Ottilia,  or  Paris  to  Helen,  is  ...  the  same  impetuous  movement 
which  imites  two  atoms  of  hydrogen  to  one  atom  of  oxygen  for  the 
formation  of  a  molecule  of  water."  ^ 

It  is  important  to  distinguish  the  panpsychistic  view  of 
nature  from  the  merely  phenomenalistic  view,  and  from  the 
idealistic  developments  of  phenomenalism.  This  difference 
can  be  most  compactly  expressed  by  saying  that  according 
to  panpsychism  nature  is  made  of  conscious  subjects.  Take, 
for  example,  any  natural  landscape.  The  phenomenalist 
and  idealist  argue  that  tree,  river  and  mountain  are  mental 
in  the  sense  of  being  appearances  to  a  sentient  or  thinking 
mind  such  as  his  own.  They  are  passive  states  belonging 
to  something  beyond  themselves.  They  are  not  mental  in 
themselves,  but  rather  in  their  relation  to  senses  or  faculties 
of  some  subject  other  than  themselves.  The  panpsychist, 
however,  would  say  that  tree,  river  and  mountain  are  them- 
selves minds  having,  like  ourselves,  their  own  states.  For 
phenomenalism  and  idealism  nature  is  a  panorama;  for  pan- 
psychism it  is  a  menagerie.  The  idealist  in  contemplating 
nature  is  communing  with  his  own  thoughts;  the  panpsychist 
feels  himself  to  be  in  a  vast  society  which  has  a  rich  interior 
life  of  its  own,  and  in  which  he  is  himself  the  object  of  a 
million  watchful  eyes. 

The  panpsychist  concedes  that  the  self-sentient  parts  of 
nature  are  also  objects  or  appearances  for  one  another.  In 
short  the  view  is  radically  dualistic.  Everything  in  the 
world  has  two  aspects;  there  is  that  which  it  is  for  others,  its 
external,  its  phenomenal  or  what  we  commonly  call  its 
physical  aspect;  and  there  is  that  which  it  is  for  itself.  The 
latter,  its  psychical  aspect  in  the  narrower  sense,  is  its  sub- 
stantial aspect.     In  other  words,  the  former  is  the  appear- 

*  Riddle  of  the  Universe j  pp.  211  flf. 


PHENOMENALISM   AND   PANPSYCHISM 


195 


ance  of  or  to  the  latter.  This  dualism,  however,  is  not  re- 
garded by  the  panpsychist  as  a  difficulty,  but  rather  as  the 
chief  theoretical  merit  of  the  doctrine.  For  it  affords  him  a 
solution  of  the  baffling  problem  of  the  relation  between  mind 
and  body.  Although  the  relation  of  these  entities  is  ob- 
viously an  intimate  one,  it  has  always  been  found  difficult  to 
conceive  their  acting  on  one  another.  The  psychologist 
evades  the  difficulty  by  provisionally  adopting  the  view  that 
mind  and  body  form  two  parallel  series  C' psycho-physical 
parallelism  ").  The  panpsychist  accounts  for  this  parallel- 
ism by  saying  that  the  one  is  the  outward,  the  other  the  in- 
ward aspect  of  the  same  thing.  They  go  on  together  for  the 
simple  reason  that  they  are  the  same  thing,  viewed  now  from 
without,  now  from  within.  And  then,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
panpsychist  generalizes  and  extends  the  conception.  He 
construes  nature  throughout  as  *' psycho-physical.  "^ 

2.  Moral  Implications.  I  have  enlarged  upon  the  pan- 
psychistic view  of  nature,  because  it  may  be  said  in  itself  to 
have  a  certain  practical,  or  at  any  rate  a  certain  emotional, 
value.  Fechner  called  it  the  "daylight  view,"  the  view 
that  ''the  material  universe,  instead  of  being  dead,  is  in- 
wardly alive  and  consciously  animated."  ^  There  is  a  deeper 
gregarious  instinct  which  extends  beyond  the  species,  and 
expresses  a  sort  of  kinship  among  all  living  things.  To  life 
nothing  is  so  uncompanionable  as  death.  A  living  creature 
avoids  the  lifelessness  of  the  desert,  and  values  the  presence 
even  of  trees  and  flowers  and  grass.  So  a  cosmos  of  waste 
spaces  and  inert  corporeal  masses  is  chilling  and  dispiriting, 
while  a  cosmos  that  is  aU  growth  and  feeUng  is  reassuring 
and  heart-warming. 

Such  a  view  of  nature  tends,  more  specifically,  to  a  pro- 
miscuous valuing  of  life.  Instead  of  valuing  exclusively 
those  higher  forms  of  mind,  such  as  reason  and  the  moral 

*  For  this  application  of  panpsychism  to  the  problem  of  mind  and  body,  cf. 
C.  S.  Strong:  Why  the  Mind  has  a  Body;  and  F.  Paulsen:  Introduction  to 
Philosophy.  The  classic  representative  of  the  view  is  G.  T.  Fechner:  Elemente 
der  Psychophysik. 

2  From  W.  James's  Preface  to  the  English  translation  of  Fechner's  LitiU 
Book  of  LiJ$  after  Death, 


196 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


will,  upon  which  man  prides  himself,  this  philosophy  values 
mind  in  all  its  primitive  and  wayward  forms.  It  tends  to  a 
liberal  and  sympathetic  regard  for  varied  forms  of  life,  each 
with  its  own  unique  individuality,  instead  of  to  an  exclusive 
regard  for  preferred  or  ''higher  ''  forms  of  hfe.^ 

3.  Religious  Implicatioiis.  But  the  most  original  appli- 
cations of  this  view  lie  in  the  field  of  religion.^  God  in  this 
view  is  not  the  perfection  of  mind,  —  the  pure  reason  or  the 
absolute  will, — but  rather  the  vast  plenitude  and  infinite  rich- 
ness of  the  cosmic  soul.  Pantheism  receives  a  new  form, 
through  the  idea  of  the  intersection  and  overlapping  of  in- 
dividual minds.  Fechner  makes  use,  for  example,  of  the 
analogy  of  a  cross-written  letter.  Read  in  one  direction  it 
has  one  meaning;  read  in  the  transverse  direction  it  has 
another  and  distinct  meaning.  And  yet  the  markings  of 
which  it  is  composed  are  everywhere  crossed  and  mingled. 
Similarly  a  puzzle  picture  represents  one  thing  if  held  in  one 
way,  and  another  thing  if  reversed,  the  same  elements  com- 
posing various  patterns  according  to  the  way  you  take  them. 
So  the  elements  of  mind  of  which  the  human  individual  is 
composed  have  each  their  own  significance,  and  form  sub- 
ordinate groupings  and  unities  of  their  own;  while  human 
minds  in  turn  enter  into  still  larger  composites  and  patterns, 
constituting  spiritual  beings  of  a  higher  order.  By  this 
principle  one  may  conceive  of  an  earth-soul  and  a  world- 
soul.  God  is  the  largest  of  these  patterns,  the  inclusive  life 
in  which  our  lesser  lives  are  contained  without  losing  their 
identity.  The  totality  of  things  has  its  own  peculiar  in- 
wardness. "And  only  because  you  are  a  part  of  this  world," 
says  Fechner,  *'see  in  yourself  also  a  part  of  that  which  it 
sees  in  itself."^ 

Our  inmiortality,  thinks  Fechner,  is  guaranteed  by  the 
fact  that  mind,  being  the  very  substance  of  things,  is  never 
lost.     It  finds  empirical  proof  in  the  fact  that  the  dead  Uve 

^  Cf.  below,  pp.  318-320. 

2  For  the  panpsychistic  religion  of  William  James,  cf.  A  Pluralistic  Uni- 


\ 


( 


PHENOMENALISM  AND  PANPSYCHISM 


197 


verse. 


Cf.  The  Little  Book  of  Life  After  Death,  English  translation,  p.  79. 
*  Op.  cit.,  p.  86. 


on  in  the  memories  of  the  living.  This  fact  he  would  con- 
strue as  a  Hteral  identity  of  the  mind  which  makes  our  present 
selves  with  those  traces,  influences  and  prolongations  which 
enter  into  the  life  of  posterity,  and  into  the  never-ceasing 
and  all-containing  life  of  God.^ 

IV.    MEANINGS   OF  IDEALISM 

The  term  "idealism"  has  now  accumulated  so  many 
meanings  that  it  is  impossible  to  use  it  without  hedging  it 
about  with  quaUfications.  Let  me  first  mention  some  of  the 
things  that  I  shall  not  mean  by  idealism.  In  the  first  place 
I  shall  not  mean  by  idealism  simply  having  ideals.  It  is 
possible  to  have  ideals  on  any  philosophical  terms,  or  per- 
haps without  any  philosophy  at  all.  I  shall  not  mean  by 
idealism  the  Platonic  theory  that  reality  consists  of  general 
ideas  or  concepts;^  for  this  doctrine  stresses  the  superiority 
of  the  abstract  universal  to  the  particulars  of  nature  or  sense, 
which  is  not  the  central  issue  in  the  present  context.  I  shall 
not  mean  the  view  that  there  is  a  deeper  purpose  in  things 
behind  the  outward  show  of  circumstance.^  Absolute  idealists 
and  personal  idealists  are  as  a  rule  also  ideahstic  in  this 
sense;  but  it  is  quite  possible  to  beUeve  in  a  deeper  cosmic 
purpose  without  being  either  an  absolute  or  a  personal 
idealist.  I  shall  not  mean  by  idealism  merely  that  general 
t)^e  of  philosophy  which  I  have  termed  spiritualistic  to 
suggest  its  provision  for  moral  and  reUgious  values. 

Phenomenalism  is  very  close  to  the  meaning  which  I  pro- 
pose, but  the  distinction  is  well  worth  making.  In  phenom- 
enalism the  items  or  terms  of  nature  are  regarded  as  appear- 
ances or  contents,  the  substance  and  the  order  of  reality 
being  left  indeterminate.  Idealism  accepts  phenomenalism 
as  a  part  of  the  truth,  and  then  completes  it  by  asserting  that 
the  substance  and  ordering  principlcjin  reality_is  the  mind 
which  receives  the  appearances,  or  in  which  the  contents  lie. 

^  For  a  similar  idea,  see  William  James:  Human  Immortdlity. 

*  This'is  commonly  called  "  Platonic  realism,"  which  shows  that  "  realism, " 
the  verbal  antithesis  of  "idealism,"  is  also  infected  with  ambiguity.  Cf 
below.  Chap.  XXV. 

^  Cf.  F.  Brunetidre:  La  Renaissance  de  VIdealisme,  pp.  19,  20. 


1 98 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


PHENOMENALISM  AND  PANPSYCHISM 


199 


Thus  the  sequel  to  phenomenalism  is  different  in  the  case  of 
idealism  from  what  it  is  in  the  case  of  panpsychism.  In  the 
latter  case,  as  we  have  seen,  each  appearance  has  its  own 
inner  substance  and  activity.  The  order  of  nature  is  the 
resultant  of  all  the  myriad  bits  of  mind-stuff  that  he  behind 
it,  each  leading  its  own  hfe,  following  its  own  impulses  and 
determining  what  shall  appear  to  any  spectator  of  nature. 
But  in  idealism  the  spectator  arranges  the  spectacle.  There 
is  nothing  behind  appearances;  their  dependence  is  not  on 
any  source  beypnd,  but  on  the  forms  of  receptivity  and  ar- 
rangement by  which  they  are  known.  In  the  spectator  or 
judge  himself  is  to  be  found  that  control  and  substantial 
support  which  the  appearance  requires.  In  short,  while 
both  panpsychism  and  idealism  accept  the  view  that  the 
immediately  given  world  is  appearance,  panpsychism  re- 
gards it  as  appearance  of  something,  while  idealism  regards 
it  only  as  appearance  to  iSome thing.  Since  for  panpsychism 
the  appearance  is  thus  more  or  less  independent  of  the  mind 
to  which  it  appears,  this  view  is  sometimes  spoken  of  as 
** realistic^';  while  since  for  idealism  the  appearance  has  no 
outer  source  or  determination,  this  view  is  sometimes  spoken 
of  as  subjectivistic.  Panpsychism,  furthermore,  since  all  the 
many  items  and  features  of  the  world  are  given  a  certain 
original  and  substantial  existence  of  their  own,  tends  to  what 
is  called  *' pluralism' ';  while  idealism,  since  the  whole  spec- 
tacle of  nature  is  held  together  and  set  in  order  by  the  know- 
ing mind,  tends  to  a  more  unitary  or  ^'monistic  "  view  of  the 
world.  '  #   "*   '    "•>   ' 

According  to  idealism,  then,  the  world  will  be  made  up  of 
knowing  minds  and  their  contents.  Or,  as  Professor  G.  H. 
Howison  has  summarized  it,  '  t      .    #        .;     ' 

"All  existence  is  either  (i)  the  existence  of  minds,  or  (2)  the 
existence  of  the  items  and  order  of  their  experience;  all  the  existences 
known  as  'material*  consisting  in  certain  of  these  experiences,  with 
an  order  organized  by  the  self-active  forms  of  consciousness  that 
in  their  unity  constitute  the  substantial  being  of  a  mind,  in  distinc- 
tion from  its  phenomenal  life."  ^ 

*  Limits  of  Evolution,  Second  Edition,  pp.  xii-xiii. 


Idealism  in  this  sense  is  what  Santayana  has  called  *Hhe 
genteel  tradition  in  American  philosophy.''^  The  same 
author  speaks  of  what  he  calls  "the  tumid  respectability  of 
Anglo-German  Philosophy."  ^  in  other  words  idealism  was 
made  in  Germany  and  imported  into  England  and  America, 
where  it  became  somewhat  consciously  respectable.  The 
animus  of  Santayana's  remark  is  simply  the  protest  of  a 
newer  generation  of  thinkers  against  the  established  philos- 
ophy. In  modern  philosophy  idealism  is  or  has  been  the 
System.  It  has  largely  controlled  the  means  of  philosophical 
production,  such  as  the  vocabulary,  the  professorships  and 
the  public  ear.  It  has  furnished  all  the  teachers  in  the  philo- 
sophical Sunday  School.  It  has  enjoyed  the  support  of  the 
authorities,  and  of  the  champions  of  law  and  order.  It  has 
written  the  history  of  philosophy  so  as  to  make  it  appear 
that  the  mounting  development  of  European  thought  culmi- 
nates in  itself.  And  then  it  has  insisted  that  the  only  proper 
philosophical  scholarship  is  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
great  masters,  thus  indoctrinating  many  generations  of  in- 
nocent and  impressionable  youth.  Such  is  the  power  more 
or  less  unconsciously  exercised  by  any  school  of  thought 
once  it  has  gained  as  great  prestige  as  was  enjoyed  by  ideal- 
ism during  the  closing  decade  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
especially  in  England  and  America.  There  is  at  present  a 
widespread  movement  of  revolt.  These  new  protestants 
were  at  first  touched  with  resentment,  largely  a  mortifica- 
tion at  their  own  past  credulity.  But  pragmatism,  instru- 
mentalism,  realism,  pluralism,  naturalism  and  the  other  pro- 
fane philosophies  of  the  day,  have  now  won  their  spurs  and 
are  claiming  the  allegiance  of  many  of  the  more  irreverent 
and  forward-looking  minds.  This  counter-idealistic  move- 
ment, to  which  we  shall  presently  turn,  has  gained  great 
impetus  from  the  war.  There  is  a  natural  disposition  at 
present  to  view  with  suspicion  anything  that  came  out  of 
Germany;  and  idealism  having  formerly  been  addicted  to 
ancestor-worship  and  having  loudly  proclaimed  its  descent 
from  the  tribe  of  Kant,  is  finding  itself  on  the  defensive. 

1  Cf.  the  essay  so  entitled  in  the  volume  Winds  of  Doctrine, 
*  Ibid.f  p.  16. 


200 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


In  expounding  idealism  I  shall  divide  the  topic  into  personal 
idealism  and  absolute  idealism.  The  former  is  nearer  to 
common  sense  and  to  orthodox  moral  and  religious  ideas. 
Hence  it  has  taken  root  more  readily  in  England  and  America. 
It  accepts  the  general  idealistic  teaching  that  nature  is  the 
content  and  artefact  of  mind.  But  by  mind  it  means  your 
mind  and  mine  —  the  minds  of  human  individuals.  God  is 
thought  of  as  a  greater  human  person  related  to  men  much 
as  men  are  related  to  one  another.  It  is  individuaHstic  and 
theistic.  Absolute  idealism  is  more  original,  more  radical 
and,  as  I  think  it  will  appear,  more  consistent  with  the  fun- 
damental premises  of  idealism.  In  this  view,  which  still 
flourishes  most  abundantly  in  Germany,  the  mind  which  sup- 
ports and  orders  nature  is  a  mind  conceived  for  the  purpose, 
a  universal  mind  —  one  as  nature  is  one,  impersonal  as 
nature  is  impersonal.  This  greater  mind,  which  is  at  once 
the  substance  of  things,  and  the  norm  or  perfection  of  all 
individual  minds,  is  called  ^^The  Absolute." 


\ 


CHAPTER  XV 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM 


I.    MOTIVES   AND   SOURCES 


The  dispute  between  personal  idealism  and  absolute 
idealism  is  only  the  latest  revival  of  the  oldest  of  all  the 
internal  feuds  of  religious  philosophy.  It  may  be  said  even 
to  have  divided  Plato  and  Aristotle,  as  it  afterwards  divided 
St.  Augustine  and  Pelagius;  and  later,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
and  Duns  Scotus;  and  later  still,  Spinoza  and  Leibniz.  The 
dispute  is  between  the  party  of  God  and  the  party  of  man; 
between  those  who  from  emphasis  on  the  feeling  of  depend- 
ence and  the  sentiment  of  admiration  so  exalt  God  as  to  dis- 
parage the  dignity  of  the  human  individual,  and  those  who 
from  emphasis  on  moral  responsibihty  so  exalt  man  as  to 
disparage  the  power  and  reality  of  God.  On  the  one  side 
there  is  the  tendency  to  universalism,  pantheism,  mysticism, 
determinism;  on  the  other  side,  individualism,  theism, 
empiricism  and  the  assertion  of  freedom.  Personal  ideaUsm 
represents  the  party  of  man  within  the  idealistic  movement, 
seeking  ^o  save  the  essentials  of  moral  responsibility  from 
being  absorbed  by  ''The  Absolute ''  — which  is  idealism's 
new  name  for  the  All-God. 

The  root  of  this  dramatic  interplay  of  motives  seems  to 
be  as  follows:  Man  invokes  God  to  save  him  from  the 
indifference  or  cruelty  or  baseness  of  nature;  and  then  finds 
that  in  order  to  obtain  this  aid  he  must  let  God  take  matters 
into  his  own  hands.  As  a  result  he  finds  himself  threatened 
with  a  new  tyranny,  and  finds  himself  struggling  to  make 
terms  with  the  very  power  he  has  called  in  as  a  friend.  There 
are  political  analogies  which  I  shall  refrain  from  drawing. 
The  application  in  the  case  of  idealism  is  clear.  The  Kan- 
tian-Hegehan  argument  is  invoked  against  the  threat  of 
science,  and  its  partisans  are  welcomed  into  the  land  of  moral 


20I 


202 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


and  religious  philosophy  by  young  girls  dressed  in  white, 
streets  decked  in  flowers,  and  with  all  the  other  marks  of 
great  popular  rejoicing.  But  after  the  deliverer  is  well 
behind  the  fortifications  he  develops  an  unmistakable  tend- 
ency to  absolutism,  which  is  nearly  if  not  quite  as  bad  as  the 
naturalism  he  was  invited  to  overthrow.  For  absolutism 
threatens  to  overwhelm  the  standards,  the  freedom  and  even 
the  individual  identity  of  the  moral  agent.  So  the  people  of 
the  land  find  it  necessary  to  rise  against  the  deliverer  and  to 
hold  him  in  check.  An  extreme  party  would  even  advocate 
expelling  him  altogether.  But  although  the  domestic  dis- 
cord that  results  greatly  aids  and  comforts  the  common 
enemy,  there  gradually  develops  a  moderate  party  made  up 
of  moralists  tinged  with  idealism,  and  ideaUsts  tinged  with 
moralism,  who  seek  to  use  the  argument  of  Kant  and  Hegel 
and  at  the  same  time  to  avoid  the  abuses  of  absolutism. 
This  moderate  party  is  personal  idealism. 

As  impartial  spectators  of  this  dramatic  episode  in  modern 
thought  we  must,  I  think,  be  affected  with  mingled  feeUngs. 
On  the  one  hand,  seeing,  as  any  advocate  of  individual  re- 
sponsibility must  see,  the  dangers  of  absolutism,  we  shall 
prefer  the  personal  idealist  to  the  absolute  idealist.  In  this 
sense  the  only  good  Hegelian  is  an  ex-HegeUan.  But  on  the 
other  hand  as  advocates  of  logical  thoroughness,  and  desiring 
to  see  an  argument  carried  through  when  once  it  is  under- 
taken, we  shall  prefer  an  out  and  out  absolute  idealism  to  a 
compromise  personal  idealism.  In  this  sense  the  only  good 
idealist  is  an  Hegelian. 

I.  Moralism.  The  form  of  moralism  which  is  most 
characteristic  of  personal  idealism,  is  the  second  of  those 
forms  which  were  examined  in  Chapter  XIII,  in  which  con- 
science is  conceived  as  essentially  self-determination.  The 
central  fact  in  morality,  according  to  this  view,  is  the  moral 
agent  himself,  with  his  sense  of  duty,  his  power  to  judge  for 
himself,  his  freedom,  and  his  responsibility.  Personal  ideal- 
ism, with  its  willingness  to  make  every  concession,  to  construe 
nature  and  even  God  as  the  integrity  of  the  moral  individual 
may  require,  is  the  metaphysical  sequel  to  this  view  of 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM 


203 


morality.  This  motive  is  most  clearly  apparent  in  a  volume 
entitled  Personal  Idealism^  published  in  1902  by  a  number 
of  philosophical  essayists  of  Oxford  University.^  Considei, 
for  example,  the  following  passage: 

"We  have  to  reckon  with  the  abiding  sense  of  the  community; 
and  in  apportioning  our  justice  in  the  public  courts,  or  over  the 
private  conscience,  we  start  from  the  hypothesis  of  this  stable  point 
at  least  —  the  reality  of  the  self,  and  the  persistence  of  the  ego, 
amid  apparent  change.  We  need  not  be  ashamed,  especially  in 
this  doubtful  province  of  philosophy,  of  seeming  to  shirk  ultimate 
problems.     Ethics  is  the  realm  of  faith."  ^ 

The  Oxford  personal  idealists,  in  other  words,  are  pri- 
marily concerned  to  obtain  a  philosophical  justification  for 
morality.  They  believe  that  morality  must  presuppose  the 
integrity  and  independence  of  the  human  individual,  and 
their  purpose  is  to  formulate  and  affirm  this  presupposition 
even  at  the  cost  of  intellectual  thoroughness  and  rigor.  It 
is  this  primary  insistence  on  what  is  supposed  to  be  required 
by  morality,  that  gives  a  pragmatist  turn  to  their  teachings 
and  accounts  for  the  inclusion  of  such  a  thinker  as  Mr. 
Schiller  in  their  number.  It  is  also  partially  accountable 
for  their  emphasis  on  the  will  rather  than  the  intellect,  and 
for  a  certain  opportunism  and  tolerant  empiricism  in  their 
method. 

In  1 90 1  Professor  George  Howison  had  already  used  the 
phrase  ''Personal  Idealism,"  in  a  book  entitled  The  Limits  of 
Evolution  and  Other  Essays  Illustrating  the  Metaphysical  Theory 
Oj  Personal  Idealism.  As  Professor  Howison  had  already  used 
the  phrase  repeatedly  four  years  before  in  his  contribution 
to  the  volume  entitled  The  Conception  of  God,  his  prior  title 
to  it  is  clearly  valid. ^  This  writer  also  is  influenced  by  the 
moraHstic  motive.  At  the  time  when  he  wrote  he  believed 
that  sound  morality  and  true  religion  were  threatened  by 

1  G.  F.  Stout,  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  W.  R.  Boyce  Gibson,  G.  S.  Underbill,  R.  R. 
Marrett,  H.  Sturt,  F.  W.  Bussell  and  H.  Rashdall. 

2  F.  W.  Bussell:  Op.  cit.,  p.  3Si- 

3  Cf.  his  discussion  of  the  matter  in  the  Preface  to  the  second  edition  of 
The  Limits  of  Evolution  (1904). 


204 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


two  varieties  of  monism,  the  evolutionary,  naturalistic 
monism  of  Spencer  and  Haeckel,  and  the  idealistic  monism 
of  Hegel.  Against  both  of  these  he  sought  to  estabhsh  a 
revised  idealism  that  should  be  thoroughly  consistent  with 
the  ideals  of  Western  civilization:  with  individualism  in 
morals,  and  theism  in  religion. 

2.  Pluralism.  That  which  Professor  Howison  believed  to 
be  most  vicious  in  existing  philosophy  of  the  prevailing 
schools  was,  as  we  have  seen,  its  monistic  tendency;  that  is, 
its  definition  of  reality  in  terms  of  one  all-determining  or  all- 
enveloping  being.  Whether  physical  or  spiritual  such  a 
being  robs  the  human  individual  of  those  prerogatives  which 
are  the  central  theme  of  moral  and  religious  thought.  Man 
is  left  with  no  freedom  to  do  his  duty  and  no  soul  to  save. 
Futhermore  such  a  being,  who  must  be  identified  with  every- 
thing that  exists,  whether  good,  bad  or  indifferent,  is  a  sort 
of  metaphysical  monstrosity,  and  not  a  worshipful  God.  To 
proclaim  their  repudiation  of  such  a  doctrine  personal  idealists 
call  themselves  "pluralists,"  meaning  to  imply  that  for  them 
the  plurality  or  manyness  of  human  individuals  is  left  as  a 
final  and  irreducible  fact  in  the  universe,  and  that  God,  in- 
stead of  being  the  All-Real,  is  only  one  of  many  realities.^ 
James  Ward,  who  is  perhaps  the  most  eminent  of  the  de- 
tached thinkers  that  may  be  grouped  with  this  tendency, 
especially  emphasizes  this  aspect  of  it.^  In  a  book  entitled 
The  Realm  of  Ends,  or  Pluralism  and  Theism,  he  says: 

"The  pluralists  take  all  their  bearings  from  the  historical  stand- 
point and  endeavor  to  work  backwards  from  the  facts  of  human 
personality  and  social  intercourse.  Their  mode  of  thought  is 
frankly,  though  not  crudely,  anthropomorphic:  hence  such  titles 
as  Personalism,  Personal  Idealism,  Humanism  and  the  like,  which 
one  or  other  has  adopted."  ^ 

Ward  and  Howison  alike  regard  the  world  as  fundamentally 

*  For  the  pluralism  of  William  James,  which  is  akin  to  this,  cf.  below  Chap. 
XXII. 

^  «  Cf.  also  A.  Seth  Pringle-Pattison   in  England,  A.  Aliotta  in  Italy  and 
E.  Boutroux  in  France. 
»  P.  71. 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM 


205 


a  plurality  or  society  of  persons,  with  God  as  in  some  sense 
the  first  among  them.  Hence  the  view  might  not  inappro- 
priately be  called  ''pluralistic  idealism"  or  "social  idealism." 
As  fellow-pluralists  Howison  recognizes  his  close  agreement 
with  Thomas  Davidson  in  America  and  with  J.  M.  E. 
McTaggart  in  England.^  But  his  comment  on  the  Oxford 
essayists  brings  to  light  a  deep  cleavage  which  we  shall,  I 
think,  find  to  involve  the  most  important  issue  with  which 
this  school  of  philosophy  is  confronted.  Howison  finds  his 
view  and  theirs  to  be  "quite  divergent  upon  most  of  the 
prime  philosophical  issues,  with  little  in  common  but  the 
affirmation  of  a  fundamental  pluralism  in  the  world  of 
ultimate  reality,  and  with  profoundly  different  conceptions 
as  to  what  that  pluralism  means. "^  It  develops  that  this 
profound  difference  turns  on  the  fundamentals  of  idealism. 
Davidson  and  McTaggart,  like  Howison,  are  good  idealists, 
striving  to  be  true  to  Kant,  and  seeking  to  correct  Hegel 
rather  than  to  reject  him.  But  the  Oxford  essayists  are 
philosophical  heathen  and  Gentiles.  In  their  eagerness  to 
save  the  premises  of  morality  and  religion  they  have  lost 
sight  of  the  essential  truth.  Their  personal  idealism  is  all 
personalism  and  no  idealism.  The  crux  of  the  matter  lies, 
I  think,  in  the  relative  claims  of  the  willing  and  the  knowing 
faculties,  in  voluntarism  versus  intellectualism. 

3.  Voluntarism  versus  Intellectualism.  The  moral  con- 
sciousness tends  to  emphasize  and  exalt  the  will,  and  especially 
in  the  reflective,  self-conscious  form  represented  by  the 
expression  "I  will."  In  so  far  as  personal  idealism  is  in- 
fluenced by  the  moral  consciousness,  it  tends  to  conceive  the 
person  as  essentially  one  who  acts  of  his  own  volition. 

Here  is  a  strain  of  thought  which  is  quite  independent  of 
phenomenalism,  and  which  has  its  own  answer  to  naturalism. 
Naturalism  and  mere  phenomenalism  both  err,  according  to 
this  view,  in  accepting  reality  as  it  is  presented  in  perception 

*  Davidson's  view,  styled  "Apeirotheism,"  affirms  a  divine  nature  distrib- 
uted through  an  indefinite  number  of  individual  minds.  For  the  relation  of 
Howison's  view  to  McTaggart's,  cf.  Limits  of  Evolutiotty  second  edition,  pp. 
389,  420,  and  McTaggart's  review  of  Howison  in  Mind,  July,  1902. 

*  Op.  ciLf  p.  xxxi. 


2o6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


or  represented  in  thought.  Like  the  panpsychist,  the 
personal  idealist  maintains  that  perception  and  thought  view 
reality  only  from  without,  and  fail  therefore  to  reach  its 
inward  essence.  This  inward  essence,  however,  is  accessible 
in  another  way,  a  way  so  short  and  direct  that  it  is  easily 
lost  sight  of.  This  way  to  the  heart  of  things  is  through 
immediate  awareness  of  one's  self  as  active,  wiUing  subject. 
So  far  the  view  does  not  differ  from  panpsychism ;  and  some 
personal  idealists,  like  James  Ward  and  Schiller,  are  wholly 
sympathetic  with  panpsychism;  holding  merely  that  it,  like 
phenomenalism,  is  an  incomplete  account  of  the  matter. 
But  ordinarily  the  personal  ideaUst  differs  from  the  panpsy- 
chist in  that  he  conceives  this  inner  reality  to  be  essentially 
voHtional  and  purposive.  His  principle  is  not  the  wider 
principle  of  the  psychic,  shading  away  through  bare  sentiency 
and  feeling  into  even  more  primitive  forms  of  mind;  but  the 
narrower  and  superior  principle  of  personaUty,  which  does  not 
appear  lower  in  the  scale  than  man.  ReaUty  of  the  inward 
sort,  then,  is  revealed  not,  as  with  the  panpsychist,  universally 
throughout  nature,  but  only  in  the  human  and  moral  realm. 
The  following  statement,  for  example,  is  characteristic: 

^  "Inexplicable  in  a  sense  as  man's  personal  agency  is,  —  nay,  the 
one  perpetual  miracle,  —  it  is  nevertheless  our  surest  datum,  and 
our  clue  to  the  mystery  of  existence.  In  the  purposive  'I  will,' 
each  man  is  real,  and  is  immediately  conscious  of  his  own  reality. 
Whatever  else  may  or  may  not  be  real,  this  is  real."  ^ 

PersonaHsm  in  this  sense  has,  as  I  have  said,  its  own  answer 
to  naturalism.  Science  has  come  gradually  to  the  adoption 
of  the  descriptive  method.  Abandoning  the  older  and 
common-sense  ideas  of  explanation  as  a  reference  to  purpose 
or  to  power,  ignoring  the  questions,  To  what  end?  and. 
Who  or  what  did  it?  science  confines  itself  to  the  question, 
Just  how  does  it  take  place?  Now  you  may  regard  this  as 
a  perfecting  of  method,  beUeving  the  ignored  questions  to  be 
childish  and  unanswerable  questions,  or  you  may  regard 
scientific  method  as  narrow  and  superficial,  speaking  of  it 

»  A.  Seth  Pringle-Pattison:   Two  Lectures  on  Theism.,  pp.  vi,  vii,  46. 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM 


207 


as  ''mere  description.''     Personal  idealism  takes  the  latter 
course. 

"We  know  why  a  thing  happened,"  says  Rashdall,  "when  we 
know  (i)  that  it  realized  an  end  which  Reason  pronounces  to  have 
value,  and  (2)  what  was  the  force  or  (knowing  all  the  abuses  to 
which  that  word  is  liable),  I  will  say,  the  real  being  which  turned 
that  end  from  a  mere  idea  into  an  actuality,  i.e.j  the  actual  experi- 
ence of  some  soul."  ^ 

In  other  words  a  real  cause,  a  cause  that  shall  wholly 
satisfy  the  demand  for  explanation,  must  be  a  purposeful  and 
substantial  agency.  But  we  are  acquainted  with  only  one 
such  agency,  and  that  is  ourselves. 

"We  are  active  beings,"  says  Ward,  "and  somehow  control  the 
movements  of  the  bodies  we  are  said  to  animate.  No  facts  are 
more  immediately  certain  than  these,  and  there  is  nothing  in  our 
actual  experience  that  conflicts  with  them."  2 

We  have  here  one  of  the  cardinal  principles  of  modern 
religious  philosophy.  Science  gives  us  only  the  bare  pro- 
cession of  events  without  the  power  that  moves  them  or  the 
goal  to  which  they  move.  Its  formulas  and  laws  sketch  the 
cosmic  machine  and  even  enable  us  to  operate  it;  but  they 
still  leave  our  minds,  to  say  nothing  of  our  hearts,  unsatisfied. 
We  want  to  know  what  nature  is  for,  and  where  it  gets  its 
punch  and  drive.  We  need  a  new  view  of  nature,  some 
illumination  wholly  different  from  that  which  is  afforded  by 
the  external  perceptions  and  conceptions  of  science.  Where 
shall  we  look?  Within  ourselves,  says  personal  idealism. 
There  we  shall  find  activity,  effort,  agency;  and  at  the  same 
time  indissolubly  wedded  to  it,  meaning,  purpose,  goal. 
Persons  do  things,  for  reasons.  That  is  in  the  last  analysis 
what  lies  behind  every  event.  Somebody  has  done  it  for 
some  reason.     It  is  the  work  of  a  person. 

This  is  the  voluntaristic  strain  in  personal  idealism. 
But  associated  with  this  is  another  strain  derived  from  Kant, 
and,  as  it  appears  to  me,  quite  different  and  even  conflicting. 

*  Personal  Idealism,  pp.  379-380. 
^  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  12. 


203 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Voluntarism  finds  personal  agency  as  a  datum  or  fact,  and 
then  generaUzes  it  as  being  the  only  kind  of  ultimate  cause 
with  which  we  are  acquainted.     It  is  not  that  nature  shows 
any  unmistakable  signs  of  having  had  a  personal  origin,  but 
only  that  since  it  must  have  had  some  origin,  and  since  this 
is  the  only  kind  of  origin  we  are  acquainted  with,  we  must 
suppose  it  to  have  had  this  origin.     It  is  like  the  old  so- 
called  cosmological  proof  of  God,  in  which  it  was  argued  that 
God  created  the  world,  not  because  there  was  anything  partic- 
ularly divine  about  the  world,  but  because  somebody  had  to  be 
assigned  to  the  role  and  God  was  the  only  available  agency. 
It  is  like  convicting  a  man  of  murder  because  notwithstand- 
ing the  fact  that  the  deed  is  not  in  the  least  characteristic 
of  him  he  is  the  only  person  who  cannot  establish  an  alibi. 
But 'the  motive  in  Kantian  idealism  is  very  different. 
Here  the  argument  is  more  like  that  used  in  the  teleological 
argument  for  God.     According  to  this  argument  God  must 
have  created  nature  because  nature  is  beautiful,  orderly,  prov- 
ident; in  other  words,  because  it  is  like  God.     So  in  Kantian 
idealism  it  is  argued  that  nature  must  be  the  work  of  spirit 
not  because  spirit  is  the  only  capable  workman  within  reach, 
but  because  nature  bears  the  imprint  of  spirit.     In  what  does 
this  imprint  consist  —  this  unconscious  signature  by  which 
the  author  betrays  his  handiwork?     It  consists,  according 
to  Kant,  in  the  unity,  order  and  system  of  nature.  ^  Nature 
is  not  chaotic  and  capricious,  but  it  obeys  laws  —  it  is  self- 
consistent.     And  this  is  just  what  it  would  be  if  it  were  the 
work  of  mind.    The  mind  prompted  by  its  own  proper  and 
inherent  motives  goes  to  nature  looking  for  unity,  order  and 
system;   and  lol   it  finds  them.     Nature  is  just  what  mind 
would  make  it,  had  mind  the  making  of  it.     The  scientist 
constructs  hypotheses.     These  are  the  work  of  mind,  its  free 
and  characteristic  creations.     Then,  asks  Professor  Ward, 

"when  this  intelligible  scheme  of  our  devising,  with  which  the 
scientific  inquirer  greets  Nature,  is  confirmed  by  Nature's  response, 
are  we  not  justified  in  concluding  that  Nature  is  intelligent  or  that 
there  is  intelligence  behind  it?"^ 

*  Realm  of  Ends,  p.  5. 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM 


209 


Several  very  important  points  are  now  to  be  observed.  In 
the  first  place  that  part  of  mind  whose  authorship  nature 
suggests  is  the  intellectual  part.  Nature  can  scarcely  be  the 
work  of  a  lover  of  happiness  or  a  lover  of  justice.'  Judging 
the  author  strictly  by  the  product,  we  should  never  infer  that 
the  world  sprang  from  the  sentiment  of  tenderness,  or  from 
the  Puritan  conscience,  or  even  from  a  sensitive  appreciation 
of  beauty;  but  we  might  infer  that  it  sprang  from  the  in- 
tellectual love  of  system.  We  might  say  that  the  world  is 
the  outward  embodiment  of  the  ideals  of  reason;  and  then, 
of  course,  we  might  afterwards  correct  our  moral,  aesthetic 
and  sundry  other  human  ideals,  to  conform.  In  the  light  of 
this  intellectuaHstic  leaning  in  Kantianism,  we  may  now 
understand  Professor  Howison's  dissent  from  the  voluntar- 
ism of  the  Oxford  school.  His  own  stricter  adherence  to  the 
Kantian  premises  finds  expression  in  the  following  passage: 

"Idealism  is  constituted  by  the  metaphysical  value  it  sets  upon 
ideals,  not  by  the  esthetic  or  the  ethical,  and  rather  by  its  method 
of  putting  them  on  the  throne  of  things  than  by  the  mere  intent  to 
have  them  there.  It  is  always  distinct  from  mysticism  (which  at 
the  core  is  simply  emotionalism),  and  still  more  so  from  volun- 
tarism. Its  method  is,  at  bottom,  to  vindicate  the  human  ideals 
by  showing  them  to  be  not  merely  ideals  but  realities,  and  to  effect 
this  by  exhibiting  conscious  being  as  the  only  absolute  reality; 
this,  again,  it  aims  to  accomplish  by  setting  the  reality  of  conscious 
being  in  the  only  trans-subjective  aspect  thereof,  namely  intelli- 
gence. So  the  fact  comes  about  that  idealism  gets  its  essential 
character  from  its  discovery  that  intelligent  certainty  depends  on 
such  an  interpretation  of  reality  as  makes  the  knowledge  of  reality 
by  the  spontaneous  light  of  intelligence  conceivable;  in  short,  that 
idealism  is  necessarily  rationalism^  that  is,  implies  an  apriorist 
theory  of  knowledge.  No  sort  of  experientialism,  so  far  as  it  is 
consistent,  can  rightly  be  called  idealism."  ^ 

In  this  passage  there  appears  also  a  second  point  that  I 
wish  to  emphasize.  The  underlying  mind,  the  ego,  is  not  a 
datum  of  which  one  is  immediately  aware,  but  rather  a 
principle  inferred  as  a  necessary  condition  of  knowledge. 
The  order  in  nature  is  due  to  the  "categories  "  or  principles 

*  Limits  of  Evolution,  second  edition,  Appendix  C,  p.  407.    Cf.  also  p.  408. 


m 


2IO 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


of  thinking;  and  there  must  be  an  ''  I  think  "  as  the  counter- 
part of  nature,  since  thinking  is  an  operation  involving  a 
single  central  active  subject.  Thus  the  Kantian  ideaUsm, 
as  reflected  in  Howison,  is  a  priori.  Spirit  is  not  found  at 
the  centre  of  things,  or  immediately  felt  to  be  there,  as  with 
the  voluntarists;  but  it  must  be  there,  it  can  be  transcen- 
dentally  proved  to  be  there.  In  other  words,  for  Professor 
Howison^  the  fundamental  thesis  of  idealism  is  that  the 
intelHgibility  of  the  world,  the  power  of  the  mind  to  know  in 
advance  of  acquaintance  with  the  facts,  and  to  know  objec- 
tively and  universally,  implies  that  the  world  itself  is  the  prod- 
uct of  intelligence.  Thus  the  deeper  creative  reality  is  not 
personal  will  regarded  as  a  kind  of  forceful  agency,  but  the 
intellectual  faculty  regarded  as  a  set  of  ideals  and  principles. 

There  is  a  third  point  of  equal  importance,  that  must  be 
introduced  here  though  it  cannot  be  fully  developed  until 
later.  That  order  of  the  world  which  suggests  the  author- 
ship of  intelligence  is  its  one  all-pervasive  order.  It  consists 
in  the  fact  that  nature's  laws  are  observed  through  the  whole 
vast  domain  of  facts  and  compel  the  assent  of  all  thinkers 
at  all  times  and  in  all  places.  Furthermore,  we  ourselves  as 
individuals  with  our  several  places  in  nature  and  history  are 
included  in  this  order.  It  follows  that  the  mind  which  sets 
up  the  order  of  nature  cannot  be  your  mind  or  mine  in  any 
personal  sense.  Thus  this  motive  in  idealism  tends  toward  the 
presupposition  of  one  great  standard  mind;  which  is  the 
distinguishing  thesis  of  absolute  idealism. 

We  may  summarize  the  interplay  of  motives  within 
personal  idealism  as  follows.  Its  moralism  and  individual- 
ism incline  it  to  voluntarism,  to  the  acceptance  of  the 
self-conscious  active  person  as  a  metaphysical  finality.  Its 
Kantian  philosophy  of  nature,  on  the  other  hand,  incHnes 
it  to  intellectualism;  and  this,  in  turn  inclines  it  to  a  uni- 
versaHsm  or  absolution  that  contradicts  the  original  motive 
of  moral  individualism.  To  this  more  fundamental  question 
we  shall  return  below,  after  examining  certain  moral  and 
religious  implications  of  personal  idealism. 

1  Cf.  op.  cit.,  pp.  13,  14,  298. 


i 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM  21 1 


II.    METAPHYSICAL  INDIVIDUALISM 

I.  The  Personal  and  Immortal  Soul.  We  have  already 
seen  that  this  view  emphasizes  the  autonomy  of  the  moral 
individual.  This  must  be  preserved  at  all  costs,  and  in 
particular  it  must  be  protected  against  the  threat  of  the 
Absolute.  There  are  two  interesting  ways  in  which  this  is 
attempted.  The  Oxford  school  with  its  voluntaristic  and 
even  panpsychistic  leanings  emphasizes  the  uniqueness  of 
the  individual  as  known  to  himself.  No  other  mind,  not 
even  God's  mind,  can  know  me  as  I  really  am.  Hastings 
Rashdall,  for  example,  puts  the  matter  as  follows: 

"A  thing  is  as  it  is  known:  its  esse  is  to  be  known:  what  it  is  for 
the  experience  of  spirits,  is  its  whole  reality:  it  is  that  and  nothing 
more.  But  the  esse  of  a  person  is  to  know  himself,  to  be  for  him- 
self, to  feel  and  to  think  for  himself,  to  act  on  his  own  knowledge, 
and  to  know  that  he  acts.  .  .  .  The  essence  of  a  person  is  not  what 
he  is  for  another,  but  what  he  is  for  himself.  It  is  there  that  his 
principium  ifidividuationis  is  to  be  found  —  in  what  he  is,  when 
looked  at  from  the  inside.  All  the  fallacies  of  our  anti-individualist 
thinkers  come  from  talking  as  though  the  essence  of  a  person  lay 
in  what  can  be  known  about  him,  and  not  in  his  own  knowledge, 
his  own  experience  of  himself."  ^ 

It  follows  that  even  God  cannot  know  the  essential  in- 
dividual as  he  is  within. 

"We  must  make  it  plain  that  the  knowledge  of  the  finite  self  by 
God  does  not  exhaust  its  being  as  is  the  case  with  the  mere  object. 
....  God  must  know  the  self  as  a  self  which  has  a  consciousness, 
an  experience,  a  will  which  is  its  own  —  that  is,  as  a  being  which 
is  not  identical  with  the  knowledge  that  He  has  of  it."  ^ 

Professor  Howison,  on  the  other  hand,  is  dominated  by 
the  Kantian  thesis  that  as  nature  is  one  great  system,  so  it 
must  be  supported  by  one  universal  mind.  But  he  hopes 
to  save  the  individual  by  construing  this  universal  mind  not 
as  the  individual  mind  of  God,  but  as  a  league  of  personal 

^  Personal  Idealism,  pp.  382,  383.  This  is  said  especially  of  such  writers  as 
Royce. 

»  Ihid.,  p.  386. 


212 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


minds,  unified  by  a  common  purpose,  and  by  a  like  intel- 
lectual constitution.  Nature  owes  its  existence  and  constitu- 
tion to  the  ''correlation  "  of  minds,  which  is  ''their  logical 
implication  of  each  other  in  the  self-defining  consciousness 
of  each."  ^  God  is  the  "Rational  Ideal,"  which  unites  all 
minds,  and  reigns  in  them  by  "light."  The  theory  of 
knowledge  is  fundamentally  Kantian,  so  far  as  concerns  the 
"spontaneity"  and  a  priority  of  the  mind.  But  how  can 
Howison  prove  this  spontaneity  for  many  individual  minds, 
when  in  the  theory  of  Kant  it  is  argued  from  the  essential 
oneness  of  the  system  of  nature?  His  answer  is  that  the  self 
implies  a  society  of  selves.     A  mind's  awareness  of  itself 

"is  seen  to  involve,  as  the  complemented  condition  making  up  its 
sufficiency y  its  awareness  of  a  whole  society  of  minds,  the  genus 
against  which  it  spontaneously  defines  itself,  per  differentiam,  as 
individual.  .  .  .  Over  and  over  it  tums  up  in  these  essays  that  a 
person  means  a  being  who  thus  recognizes  others  and  relates  him- 
self to  them,  and  that  the  Personal  System,  while  rigorously 
idealistic,  making  all  existence  root  in  the  existence  of  minds,  is 
still  always  a  Social  Idealism,  so  that  the  objective  judgment  is 
always  the  judgment  that  carries  the  weight  of  the  social  logic,  and 
the  final  test  of  any  and  every  truth,  though  never  so  often  dis- 
covered in  the  private  chamber  of  the  single  spirit,  is  that  it  con- 
forms to  this  principle  of  universal  social  recognition."  ^ 

Howison's  view  might  be  called  a  "moral  idealism  "  in 
that  the  a  priori  subject,  being  plural,  free  and  social,  is 
therefore  morally  equipped;  and  in  that  all  the  Kantian 
articles  of  moral  and  reUgious  faith  are  regarded  as  necessary 
to  the  constitution  of  the  mind  in  its  cognitive  as  well  as  in 
its  practical  functions.  "The  purpose  is,  to  exhibit  the 
theoretical  nature  and  functions  of  the  moral  consciousness 
itself,  thus  closing  the  chasm  left  by  Kant  between  his 
noumenal  world  of  morality  and  his  phenomenal  world  of 
science."  ^ 

Professor  Howison  agrees  with  Kant  in  thinking  the  moral 


*  Limits  of  Evolution,  second  edition,  p.  xiii. 

'  Ibid.,  pp.  xxxvi,  xxxvii,  xxxviii.    He  speaks  of  "this  sociality  of  the  pri- 
mordial logic  of  self-consciousness."     (p.  xxxiii.) 
'  Ibid.,  p.  384. 


i 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM 


213 


life  to  demand  immortality,  as  an  opportunity  of  spiritual 
growth.  But  he  does  not  leave  immortaUty  in  the  doubtful 
status  of  an  article  of  faith.  The  soul  as  member  of  that 
society  of  minds  which  creates  and  underUes  nature  cannot 
itself  be  subject  to  the  vicissitudes  of  nature. 

"We  .  .  .  discover  our  personal  self  to  be  the  regulative  source 
of  all  the  laws  under  which  natural  or  sensible  existence  must  have 
its  course,  and  so  to  be  possessed  of  a  being  that  by  its  essence 
transcends  all  the  vicissitudes  of  the  merely  natural  world,  surviv- 
ing all  its  possible  catastrophes  and  supplying  the  ground  for  its 
continuance  in  new  modes  under  new  conditions."  ^ 

The  trouble  with  this  view  is  that  the  immortal  soul  is  as 
effectually  prevented  from  living  as  from  dying.  The  bodily 
and  mental  life  which  it  cognizes,  which  belongs  to  the 
phenomena  of  nature  and  history,  has  all  the  adventures, 
and  it  dies.  The  immortal  soul  can  only  be  a  spectator  of  its 
own  instantaneous  handiwork.  Its  self-activity  cannot  be 
in  time;  it  cannot  grow,  or  pursue  ideals  in  time,  because 
time  is  its  own  creation.  The  soul  which  survives  death 
is  not  that  soul  which  was  in  the  time  before  death. 

2.  Freedom.  The  moral  individual  must  not  only  be 
distinct  and  indestructible;  it  must  also  be  free.  The  view 
of  freedom  also  assumes  two  different  forms,  according  as  we 
adopt  the  looser  voluntaristic  form  of  personal  idealism,  or 
the  stricter,  Kantian  form  represented  by  Howison. 

For  the  Oxford  essayists,  freedom  is  thought  of  in  relatively 
negative  terms.  The  important  thing  is  that  the  world 
should  still  be  in  the  making,  a  place  where  possibilities 
abound,  and  where  the  will  of  man  can  make  a  difference. 
To  quote  F.  W.  Bussell: 

"Morality  concemed  with  the  Good  which  is  not  yet,  but  may 
be,  through  our  endeavor,  dwells  in  a  chiaroscuro  realm  of  Faith 
and  Instinct;  where  that  clear  light  never  penetrates  that  is  wont 
to  display  in  unmistakable  outlines  the  realm  of  Truth  or  of  Power, 
of  mathematical  and  physical  law.  .  .  .  The  limits  of  omnipotence 
seemed  to  J.  S.  Mill  to  constitute  the  strongest  claim  on  the  efforts 
and  the  co-operation  of  good  men;  the  heroic  soul  is  conscious  of 

1  Ibid.,  pp.  298,  300,  302,  306,  309. 


214 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  same  attraction  in  the  field  of  ethics.  Its  decision  is  a  bold  wager 
in  the  face  of  probabilities."  ^ 

For  Professor  Howison,  on  the  other  hand,  freedom,  like 
immortality,  lies  among  the  prerogatives  of  the  creative 
mind.  The  action  both  of  man  and  of  God  is  governed  by 
reason,  but  thinking  is  the  pursuit  of  truth  by  one  who 
chooses  truth.  Free  action  is  neither  forced,  nor  is  it  arbi- 
trary and  capricious,  but  is  rational  action,  "action  spon- 
taneously flowing  from  the  definite  guiding  intelligence  of 
the  agent  himself."  ^ 

Man  and  God  are  in  accord,  but  this  does  not  mean  that 
God  coerces  man.  They  agree  because  all  spiritual  beings 
are  inwardly  governed  by  the  same  rational  purpose. 

"Each  spirit  other  than  God,  let  us  suppose,  fulfils  in  its  own 
way  and  from  its  own  self-direction  the  one  universal  Type  or 
Ideal.  Then  each  in  doing  its  '  own  will,'  that  is,  in  defining  and 
guiding  its  life  by  its  own  ideal,  does  the  ultimate  or  inclusive  will 
of  all  the  rest;  and  men  realize  the  'will  of  God,'  that  is,  fulfil 
God's  ideal,  by  fulfilling  each  his  own  ideal,  while  God  fulfils  the 
'will  of  man'  by  freely  fulfilling  himself."  ^ 

In  other  words,  God^s  power  over  man  is  not  that  of  efficient 
but  that  of  final  causation;  and  this  does  not  prejudice  man's 
freedom,  since  man  himself  freely  adopts  the  end  which  he 
follows.^ 


III.    THEISM 

I.  The  Problem  of  Evil.  I  suppose  that  it  is  a  well-known 
fact  that  the  oldest  and  the  most  stubborn  problem  for 
religious  philosophy  is  the  problem  of  evil.  Religion  raises 
up  two  ideals,  the  ideal  of  a  Power  which  rules  all  things  and 
on  which  man,  weary,  despondent  and  conscious  of  his  failure 
can  rely;  and  the  ideal  of  a  Goodness  which  man  may 
unqualifiedly  admire  and  emulate.  The  problem  of  evil  lies 
in  the  difficulty  of  uniting  these  two  ideals  in  one  Being,  the 

*  Personal  Idealism,  pp.  343-344. 
2  Op.  cit.,  p.  320. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  328. 

*  On  the  question  of  alternatives  and  choice,  cf.  pp.  319,  369.  , 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM 


2x5 


difficulty  in  view  of  the  facts  of  evil  in  the  world.  If  God  be 
all-powerful,  how  can  he  be  acquitted  of  responsibility  for 
these  facts,  and  how  can  he  be  unqualifiedly  admired  and 
emulated.  If  God  be  perfectly  good,  how  can  he  be  the 
author  of  these  facts  of  evil,  and  how  can  he  be  the  all- 
powerful  Creator  in  whom  the  worshipper  puts  his  trust. 
Absolute  Idealism,  like  Calvinism,  holds  to  the  omnipotence 
of  God,  and  tries  to  adjust  his  goodness  thereto.  Personal 
idealism,  like  common-sense  Christianity,  holds  to  the  good- 
ness of  God,  and  is  correspondingly  doubtful  about  his 
omnipotence.  Indeed  the  personal  idealist  avowedly  sets 
limits  to  God's  power;  and  has  some  difficulty  even  in  pro- 
viding a  place  for  God  at  all.  In  short  the  first  interest  of 
personal  idealism  being  in  the  personal  moral  consciousness, 
theology  has  to  be  cut  to  fit. 

The  view  of  personal  idealism  finds  interesting  and  timely 
expression  in  a  recent  book  entitled  The  Faith  and  the  War. 
The  facts  of  evil  have  in  our  day  been  multiplied,  aggravated 
and  indelibly  impressed  upon  the  human  mind.  Personal 
idealism  accepts  this  evil  as  evil;  and  does  not  seek  to 
extenuate  it  or  to  explain  it  away.  The  indisputable  exist- 
ence of  evil  makes  it  necessary  for  us  to  take  a  more  patient 
view  of  the  world.  That  goodness-triumphant  for  which  all 
moral  beings  labor,  and  in  which  they  must  all  ardently 
believe  is  not  a  fait  accompli,  but  a  far-off  goal  to  be  reached 
by  prolonged  and  painful  effort. 

"The  world,"  says  James  Ward,  "has  thoroughly  to  evolve  itself; 
everything  is  tried,  and  what  is  found  wanting  cannot  survive. 
Experimentally  to  know  evil  is  to  shun  it.  Here  the  slow  grinding 
and  the  exactness  come  in.  Applying  the  argument  to  the  present 
time:  —  the  German  ideal  of  militarism  is  a  great  experiment  of 
the  sort  men  try,  like  slavery,  polygamy  and  the  exploitation  of 
labor  — the  masses  as  'hands.'  If  militariness  is  utterly  defeated 
and  exposed  now,  that  will  be  a  move  on  for  the  world;  and  the 
lesson,  it  may  fairly  be  said,  will  be  worth  what  it  costs,  especially 
if  it  clear  the  way  for  social  and  political  advances,  which  have  been 
so  long  delayed."  ^ 

»  From  a  letter  to  the  editor  of  The  Faith  and  the  War,  op.  cit.,  p.  xii. 


If 


2l6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


God;  in  this  view,  is  a  Power  struggling  for  ascendancy. 
Another  contributor,  Percy  Gardner,  expresses  his  faith  as 
follows : 

"Thinking  men  have  more  and  more  accepted  the  view,  repug- 
nant to  the  old  a  priori  theology,  that  the  divine  Power  as  revealed 
in  experience  is  not  victoriously  omnipotent,  but  works  gradually, 
makes  its  way  by  slow  progress,  often  suffers  partial  defeat  from 
the  hostile  forces  of  evil.  Also  that  it  is  our  duty  and  our  highest 
privilege  to  place  ourselves  on  the  side  of  that  Power,  to  work  with 
it,  and  that  in  such  partisanship  human  merit  Ues."  ^ 

It  will  always  remain  true  that  the  world  with  the  good 
that  we  did  not  do  would  have  been  a  better  place  than  the 
world  without  such  a  good.  Similarly,  Hastings  Rashdall 
recognizes  the  irremediable  imperfection  of  the  world.  We 
have  to  suppose,  he  continues,  that  God's  good  will  is  un- 
limited but  that  his  power  is  limited;  and  that  we  are 
"  fellow- workers  with  Him,  who  works  in  and  through  human 
wills,  and  through  the  co-operation  of  those  wills  is  conduct- 
ing the  Universe  to  the  greatest  good  that  He  knows  to  be 
possible  of  attainment."  ^ 

Professor  Howison,  as  might  be  expected,  cannot  accept 
so  irregular  a  proceeding.  Though  evil  is  not  to  be  justified, 
and  though  God  must  be  kept  clear  of  it,  nevertheless  it  is 
not  an  accident.  Like  everything  else  it  has  its  place  in  the 
world;  that  place  being  below  the  level  of  God,  within  the 
sensuous  experience  peculiar  to  man. 

"We  can  have  no  hope  in  moral  endeavor  in  a  world  whose 
Source  and  Controller  we  cannot  clear  of  suspicion  of  intending  or 
causing  evil,  or  of  being  in  collusion  with  it,  or  of  even  conniving  at 
it.  ...  I  have  already  hinted  at  the  success  of  the  new  PluraHsm. 
Its  God  has  no  part  whatever  in  the  causation  of  evil,  but  the  whole 
of  evil,  both  natural  and  moral,  falls  into  the  causation,  either 
natural  or  moral,  that  belongs  to  the  minds  other  than  God.  They 
alone  carry  in  their  being  the  world  of  sense,  wherein  alone  evil 
occurs  or  wrong-doing  can  be  made  real."  ^ 

»  "Providence  and  the  Individual,"  in  The  Faith  and  the  War,  p.  21. 
2  "The  Problem  of  Evil,"  The  Faith  and  the  War,  p.  100. 
'  Op.  cit.,  p.  402. 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM 


217 


2.  God.  God  being  in  this  philosophy  divested  of  su- 
preme authority  in  the  world,  his  position  is  relatively 
insecure.  The  purely  metaphysical  motive  in  theology  is 
discredited.  If  there  can  be  something  outside  God  that 
limits  him,  then  it  can  no  longer  be  argued  that  God  is  the 
necessary  condition  of  there  being  any  reality  at  all.  There 
is  room  for  the  suspicion  that  he  may  for  strictly  philoso- 
phical purposes  be  a  superfluity.  The  self-sufficient  moral 
persons  become  so  self-sufficient  that  the  world  tends  to  be 
a  spiritual  aristocracy  or  fraternity  rather  than  a  spiritual 
monarchy. 

But  though  the  metaphysical  basis  for  theology  becomes 
questionable,  there  is  still  in  this  philosophy  a  sufficient 
ethical  basis.  God,  as  we  have  already  seen,  is  needed  to 
give  unity  to  the  moral  enterprise.  He  is  the  moral  life  in 
its  solidarity.  He  is  the  one  uniting  purpose  in  which  all 
participate.  He  is  the  more  than  human  purity  and  con- 
sistency of  purpose,  the  more  than  human  steadfastness  and 
vigor  of  purpose,  by  which  the  whole  moral  achievement  is 
guaranteed.  Thus  James  Ward,  for  example,  accepting  the 
broad  principle  of  evolution,  says  that  when  nature  has 
mounted  from  novelty  to  novelty,  from  value  to  value,  to 
the  level  of  human  culture,  then  "the  final  goal  of  evolution 
comes  into  sight,  not  a  pre-established  harmony  but  the 
eventual  consummation  of  a  perfect  commonwealth,  wherein 
all  co-operate  and  none  conflict,  wherein  the  many  have  be- 
come one,  one  realm  of  ends."  ^  This  author,  who  accepts 
the  panpsychistic  view  of  nature  as  containing  inferior  forms 
of  mind,  conceives  God  as  the  supreme  form;  only  one  of 
many,  but  the  completion  and  perfection  of  the  rest. 

"If  then  we  regard  the  universe  as  teeming  with  hving  orbs, 
how  are  we  to  imagine  these  as  ever  constituting  the  commonwealth 
of  worlds  .  .  .  ?  Such  questions  lead  the  pluralist  to  apply  the 
principle  of  continuity  upwards  as  well  as  downwards.  To  connect 
these  otherwise  unconnected  worlds  he  is  driven  to  assume  a  hier- 
archy of  intelligences  of  a  higher  order,  and  so  is  led  on  to  conceive 
a  Highest  of  all.''  2 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  434-435. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  435-436. 


2l8 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Professor  Howison  regards  God^s  limitations  not  as  a 
disability  or  defect  of  any  kind,  but  as  essential  to  his  nature 
as  a  moral  being.  If  God  were  a//,  then  he  could  not  be  a 
person.  **For  it  is  the  essence  of  a  person  to  stand  in  a 
relation  with  beings  having  an  autonomy,  in  which  he 
recognizes  rights,  toward  whom  he  acknowledges  duties." 
So  the  personality  of  God  implies  men  as  the  necessary 
objects  of  his  moral  dealings.  '^Genuine  omniscience  and 
omnipotence  are  only  to  be  realized  in  the  control  of  free 
beings,  and  in  inducing  the  divine  image  in  them  by  moral 
influences  instead  of  metaphysical  and  physical  agencies;  that 
is,  hy  final  instead  of  efficient  causation.'^  ^ 

God  is  unique  only  as  the  perfect  person.  Man's  sense  of 
his  own  individuality  implies  that  he  is  a  peculiar  degree  or 
phase  of  a  graduated  reality,  and  that  all  the  other  possible 
degrees  and  phases  ^exist,  including  God  as  the  *^  Supreme 
Instance.'^  ^ 

IV.    THE   TENDENCY   TO   ABSOLUTISM 

Personal  idealism,  I  believe,  is  properly  to  be  regarded  as 
occupying  an  unstable  intermediate  position  between  pan- 
psychistic  and  pragmatistic  pluralism  on  the  one  hand,  and 
absolutism  on  the  other.  Stress  the  demands  of  individua- 
listic morality,  and  the  intuition  of  individual  self-existence, 
and  it  is  easy  to  escape  the  Absolute.  But  at  the  same 
time  one  loses  the  important  support  of  the  Kantian  theory 
of  knowledge,  and  the  philosophy,  though  more  acceptable 
to  moral  common-sense,  is  much  less  cogent  as  a  theory. 
But  once  the  Kantian  theory  of  knowledge  is  accepted 
idealism  is  on  a  slippery  inclined  plane  with  the  Absolute 
waiting  at  the  bottom. 

Nature  presents  a  well-nigh  insoluble  problem  to  the 
personal  idealists.  Starting  as  they  do  with  a  variety  of 
individuals  as  ultimate,  how  is  one  to  account  for  the  com- 
monness and  uniformity  of  nature?  If  you  have  only  one 
creative  spirit,  then  you  can  say  that  the  objectivity  of 

^  Op.  cit.,  pp.  65. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  355, 


PERSONAL  IDEALISM 


219 


nature  reflects  the  oneness  and  self-consistency  of  its  author. 
But  if  you  have  many  authors,  and  are  to  escape  relativism, 
then  you  must  predicate  a  uniformity  or  like-mindedness  of 
spirits;  which  virtually  submits  them  to  an  impersonal 
dominion  very  like  the  laws  of  nature. 

Howison,  as  we  have  seen,  would  regard  the  fundamental 
mind  from  which  all  the  categories  of  nature  spring  as  itself 
social.  But  if  the  principles  of  structure  and  order  in  the 
world  are  the  work  of  mind,  as  Kant  asserts,  then  this  must 
hold  of  its  social  as  well  as  of  its  physical  structure.  If  there 
be  many  spiritual  persons,  they  must  stand  in  some  scheme 
of  relations  to  one  another.  In  some  sense  they  must,  like 
nature,  form  one  system.  But  it  is  of  the  essence  of  Kantian- 
ism that  all  such  connecting  and  ordering  relations,  not  only 
time,  but  the  more  abstract  relations  as  well,  should  be 
regarded  as  the  work  of  an  enveloping  and  correlating  mind. 
System,  for  Kant,  is  the  product  of  a  systematizing  or  syn- 
thesizing act.  Then  the  system  of  persons,  too,  must  be  the 
product  of  such  a  mind.  The  moral  kingdom  must  be 
unified  and  supported  by  a  general,  all-including  act  of 
knowledge.  The  result  is  that  either  God  falls  within  such 
a  system,  and  is  not  even  the  supreme  spiritual  being;  or  he 
is  this  all-including  act  of  knowledge,  in  which  case  he  be- 
comes the  Absolute.  Thus  absolutism  is  the  price  which 
religious  philosophy  must  pay  for  the  support  of  Kantian 
idealism.  Is  the  gain  worth  the  cost?  To  answer  that 
question  we  must  examine  absolutism  and  seek  to  discover 
what  moral  and  religious  alternatives  are  open  to  those  who 
boldly  accept  it. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
KANT  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 

Although  absolute  idealism  has  many  implications  which 
are  repugnant  to  popular  convictions  and  sentiments,  there 
is  at  least  one  motive  in  common-sense  to  which  it  makes  a 
strong  appeal.  There  is  a  very  widespread  and  natural 
feeling  that  there  is  something  going  on  in  the  world  as  a 
whole.  It  is  this  motive  which  has  inspired  most  purely 
philosophical  speculation,  and  is  responsible  for  the  popular 
interest  in  philosophical  speculation.  There  is  supposed  to 
be  a  sort  of  cosmic  bandwagon  and  everybody  wants  to  get 
aboard.  Things  are  moving  somewhere  and  everybody  wants 
to  join  the  procession.  Speculative  philosophy  is  looked  to 
as  a  means  by  which  the  initiated  may  learn  what  it  all  means, 
and  how  to  take  part  in  it.  Or,  the  facts,  according  to  this 
view,  are  the  fragments  of  a  puzzle  which  if  only  put  together 
in  the  right  way  would  make  a  grand  cosmic  picture.  Philos- 
ophy is  expected  to  provide  the  key  to  the  puzzle.  The 
monistic  or  absolutist  type  of  philosophy  derives  a  certain 
favorable  presumption  from  the  wilUngness  of  the  average 
mind  to  concede  without  argument  that  there  is  some  unity 
and  meaning  to  things.  If  it  is  not  precisely  that  which  any 
one  such  philosophy  proposes,  then  at  any  rate  it  is  some- 
thing of  the  kind.  The  poet  Thomas  Hardy  refers  as  a 
matter  of  course  to  ^'the  ubiquitous  urging  of  the  Immanent 
WiU." 

"A  Will  that  wills  above  the  will  of  each, 

Yet  but  the  will  of  all  conjunctively." 

He  expresses  the  general  conviction: 

"That  shaken  and  unshaken  are  alike, 

But  demonstrations  from  the  Back  of  Things."  * 

*  Tlte  Dynasts. 
220 


KANT  AND  THE   ABSOLUTE 


221 


It  is  the  existence  of  such  a  ''Back  of  Things  "  that  is  so 
universally  conceded,  and  which  is  the  central  thesis  of 
philosophical  absolutism.  This  philosophy,  as  we  shall  see, 
turns  out  to  be  disappointingly  negative  when  it  comes  to 
the  precise  nature  of  this  ''Back  of  Things."  And  it  would 
appear  that  we  ought  not  to  speak  of.  a  fact  as  a  "demonstra- 
tion "  from  the  "Back  of  Things,''  unless  we  are  in  a  position 
to  see  the  "Back  of  Things  "  and  in  the  light  of  it  to  interpret 
the  fact.  "If  we  talk  of  a  certain  thing  being  an  aspect  of 
truth,''  says  Mr.  Chesterton,  "it  is  evident  that  we  claim  to 
know  what  is  truth;  just  as,  if  we  talk  of  the  hind  leg  of  a 
dog,  we  claim  to  know  what  is  a  dog."  ^  So  in  order  to  be 
justified  in  regarding  the  particulars  of  nature  and  history 
as  limbs  or  members  of  a  greater  organism,  we  ought  to  know 
what  is  the  organism.  But  so  strong  is  the  popular  pre- 
sumption in  favor  of  everything's  being  an  aspect,  or  member, 
or  demonstration  of  something^  that  this  objection  is  not 
commonly  pressed;  with  the  result  that  absolutism  gains 
an  unwarrantably  easy  ascendancy  over  our  minds. 

Although  in  what  follows  we  shall  be  mainly  concerned 
with  the  values,  the  moral,  religious  and  political  implica- 
tions of  absolutism,  we  must  first  learn  how  the  modern, 
ideahstic  form  of  absolutism  is  built  up  on  Kantian  founda- 
tions. 

I.    THE   KANTIAN  DUALISM 

I.  Knowledge  and  Faith.  The  germ  of  Kantianism  lies 
in  his  doctrine  of  the  categories.  The  only  way,  says  Kant, 
in  which  knowledge,  and  in  particular  scientific  knowledge, 
can  be  justified,  is  by  supposing  that  it  puts  its  own  formal 
stamp  upon  the  plastic  materials  of  sense.  In  knowledge  we 
proceed  as  though  nature  formed  an  orderly,  self-consistent 
system.  So  far  as  knowledge  is  concerned  there  is  no  other 
way  of  proceeding.  The  moment  you  try  to  understand 
anything,  the  moment  you  form  any,  even  the  most  tentative, 
opinions  about  it,  you  assume  that  the  thing  in  question  has 
a  nature  of  its  own,  and  has  fixed  relations  to  other  things. 

^  Heretics,  p.  293. 


222 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


KANT  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 


223 


You  assume  that  it  has  this  nature  and  these  relations  equally 
for  any  mind  that  may  undertake  to  know  it.  In  other 
words,  the  underlying  assumption  in  all  knowledge  is  that 
things  form  one  objective  system.  But  how  is  one  to  obtain 
any  guarantee  that  nature  will  comply  with  this  condition 
and  so  let  itself  be  known?  There  could  be  no  guarantee,  says 
Kant,  if  we  supposed  nature  to  be  quite  independent  of  our 
mind.'  We  should  then  have  to  wait  and  see,  and  we  should 
have  to  wait  endlessly,  because  we  could  never  be  sure  that 
the  facts  not  yet  reported  would  not  prove  recalcitrant. 
Kant  concludes,  then,  that  the  only  nature  that  can  be  known 
must  be  a  nature  on  which  the  mind  has  imposed  its  own 
conditions.  The  guarantee  that  nature  will  prove  to  be  an 
objective  system,  and  so  knowable,  hes  in  the  fact  that  the 
mind  makes  it  an  orderly  system  in  the  course  of  knowing  it. 
A  ranch  owner  can  be  sure  that  all  the  cattle  in  his  inclosure 
will  bear  a  certain  brand,  only  if  he  stations  somebody  at  the 
entrance  to  brand  all  cattle  as  they  come  in.  So  the  mind 
appointing  the  understanding  to  brand  all  the  data  of  knowl- 
edge as  they  flow  in  through  the  senses,  to  brand  them  with 
the  principles  or  categories  that  define  an  objective  system, 
can  be  sure  that  all  its  content  will  bear  that  brand. 

Thus  to  make  nature  knowable  at  all,  Kant  finds  it 
necessary  to  make  nature  in  part  the  product  of  the  knowing 
mind.  As  respects  its  form,  its  connecting  and  ordering 
principles,  such  as  space,  time,  substance  and  causaHty,  it 
is  an  artefact,  a  something  made  by  the  cognitive  faculties. 
Since  it  is  essential  to  objectivity  and  system  that  there 
should  be  one  system  forVl,  this  making  cannot  be  supposed 
to  be  done  differently  and  independently  by  individual 
human  minds;  there  must  be  one  nature  made  for  all,  by  a 
sort  of  general,  impersonal  mind  in  which  we  all  participate. 

This  is  the  idealism  of  Kant  himself.  It  had  very  definite 
limitations.  Thus  Kant  restricted  the  creative  function  of 
mind  to  the  formal  aspect  of  nature,  and  supposed  that  the 
senses  received  impressions  from  an  external  and  unknown 
source,  which  he  called  the  ^'thing-in-itself.''  Furthermore, 
he  thought  that  the  only  constructive  principles  emploved 


by  the  mind  were  the  concepts  of  the  physical  sciences;  and 
he  had  in  mind  more  particularly  the  concepts  of  exact, 
mechanical,  mathematical  science  as  represented  by  Newton. 
Finally,  he  was  very  strict  in  adhering  to  the  view  that  this 
construction  of  nature  by  science  was  the  only  knowledge. 
In  short,  the  only  known  world  is  nature  as  depicted  in  the 
physical  sciences,  and  this  is  a  union  of  materials  given 
through  the  senses  with  forms  of  arrangement  supplied  by 
the  knowing  mind  itself. 

Now  Kant,  as  we  have  already  seen,  was  also  a  moralist. 
He  was  concerned  no  less  with  *^the  moral  law  within  "  than 
with  **the  starry  heavens  above.''  His  dualism  results  from 
the  fact  that  when  he  came  to  morality  he  began  all  over 
again.  He  did  not  include  morality  within  nature  and  so 
explain  it  in  terms  of  the  categories;  but  just  as  he  had  first 
asked  himself  what  assumptions  were  necessary  to  satisfy 
the  demands  of  scientific  knowledge,  so  now  he  asks  him- 
self, quite  independently,  what  assumptions  are  necessary 
to  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  moral  consciousness.  We  have 
already  heard  his  answer.  The  moral  agent  must,  in  keep- 
ing with  the  performance  of  his  duty,  beUeve  in  God,  Free- 
dom and  Immortality.  In  this  case,  knowledge  is  out  of  the 
question,  because  there  are  no  sense-data.  Desiring  to 
reserve  the  title  of  knowledge  for  that  combination  of  sensa- 
tion and  understanding  that  is  characteristic  of  science,  Kant 
here  employs  the  term  ''faith.'' 

2.  The  Two  Realms.  Since  Kant  developed  the  pre- 
suppositions of  science  and  the  presuppositions  of  duty  quite 
independently,  there  was  no  reason  why  they  should  not 
conflict.  And  such,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  proved  to  be  the 
case.  As  a  part  of  nature,  man  belongs  to  the  causal  nexus; 
as  a  moral  agent  he  is  free.  As  a  part  of  nature  man  dies; 
as  a  moral  agent,  he  is  immortal.  Nature  so  far  as  science 
is  concerned  is  ruled  by  blind  mechanical  law,  but  in  religion 
nature  is  created  and  controlled  by  a  benevolent  God. 
Kant  avoided  contradiction,  or  sought  to  do  so,  by  dividing 
the  world  between  these  two  conflicting  claims.  There  is 
the  known  world  of  phenomena  where  science  reigns;  and  the 


224 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


unknown  world  of  noumena,  where  morality  reigns.  Man 
belongs  to  both.  I  shall  presently  discuss  the  way  in  which 
this  dualism  was  overcome  and  superseded  by  Absolutism. 
But  I  wish  first  to  suggest  that  there  are  important  practical 
implications  in  duahsm  itself,  imphcations  which  might  be 
said  to  constitute  a  strictly  Kantian  philosophy  of  life.^ 

The  strict  Kantian  is  at  one  and  the  same  time  a  rigorous 
positivist  and  a  rigorous  moraHst.  You  must  not  allow 
moraUty  to  compromise  science,  or  science  morality.  In 
the  realm  of  nature  you  must  adhere  strictly  to  the  me- 
chanical view.  Man,  so  far  as  you  view  him  psychologically, 
as  a  creature  with  appetite  and  passions,  must  be  submitted 
to  a  rigorous  causal  explanation.  Being  thorough  and 
scientific  in  one's  dealings  with  physical  nature,  one  will 
stress  the  technological  aspect  of  civilization.  And  where 
you  are  dealing  with  mankind  as  psychological  causes,  you 
will  be  a  disillusioned  Realpolitiker. 

In  the  realm  of  morahty,  on  the  other  hand,  the  dualist 
will  abstract  altogether  from  nature.  Duty  of  the  Kantian 
sort  makes  no  concession  to  feeling,  whether  one's  own  or 
anybody  else's.  Duty  does  not  learn  by  experience.  It  is 
neither  confirmed  by  any  kind  of  success  nor  discredited  by 
any  kind  of  failure.  It  is  not  likely  to  be  either  useful  to 
mankind,  because  it  is  above  all  consideration  of  conse- 
quences; or  urbane  and  gentle,  because  it  does  not  allow 
itself  to  be  refined  by  social  experience.  It  is  a  priori,  and 
from  within.  Having  no  relation  to  outward  success  or 
failure,  it  is  accompanied  by  no  expectation  of  achievement 
in  this  world.  The  faith  which  it  begets  has  to  do  altogether 
with  another  world.  Thus  Kant  justifies  the  supernaturahs- 
tic  and  other-worldly  teaching  of  Christianity,  the  sinfulness 
of  the  natural  man,  and  the  postponement  of  blessedness, 
or  the  union  of  virtue  and  happiness,  to  a  world  beyond  the 

^  Kant  himself  made  some  efifort  to  reconcile  this  dualism  in  the  Critique 
of  Judgment,  but  the  significance  of  this  attempt  is  better  understood  in  its 
fuller  (and  non-Kantian)  development  by  his  successors. 

The  practical  imphcations  of  Kantian  duahsm,  with  especial  reference  to 
current  German  ideals  and  policies  are  admirably  developed  by  J.  Dewey,  in 
his  German  Philosophy  and  Politics^  I.    Cf.  below,  pp.  420-421. 


KANT  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 


225 


grave.  The  moral  life  is  an  inner  life,  a  conformity  of  will 
to  the  imperatives  of  the  practical  reason.  As  such  it  may 
be  divorced  from  the  externals  of  life,  and  being  so  divorced 
it  does  not  interfere  with  the  application  there  of  the  mechani- 
cal principles  of  science. 

II.    FROM  KANT  TO  METAPHYSICS 

Kant  declared  that  he  was  no  metaphysician;  that  meta- 
physical knowledge  was  impossible.  He  called  his  method 
the  method  of  criticism,  meaning  that  he  merely  brought  to 
light  the  presuppositions  of  science  and  morals.  While 
''criticism  "  has  been  continued  and  developed  by  those  who 
pride  themselves  on  the  purity  of  their  Kantianism,  the  great 
influence  of  Kant  has  been  due  to  the  metaphysics  which,  in 
spite  of  himself,  he  has  inspired.  This  metamorphosis  of 
criticism  into  metaphysics  we  must  now  examine. 

Kant  thought  that  metaphysics  was  impossible  because  of 
the  impossibility  of  knowing  the  world  in  any  ultimate  and 
definitive  way.     Knowledge  is  an  interminable  operation  of 
building  sense-data  into  the  structure  of  nature  as  fast  as 
they  come  in.     The  structure  is  never  completed  because  the 
data  never  get  through  coming  in.     All  knowledge  is  rela- 
tive to  an  inexhaustible  and  unfathomable  source  of  supply. 
The  transition  to  metaphysics,  however,  is  suggested  by  the 
following  consideration.     Cannot  the  sense-data  themselves 
be  regarded  as  the  creation  of  mind?    After  all,  we  never 
meet  with  them  in  a  purely  sensuous  form.     They  are  always 
in  some  degree  thought  over  and  judged.     Furthermore,  it 
is  inconsistent  to  attribute  them  to  an  external  source,  when 
it  has  to  be  acknowledged  that  the  source  in  question  lies 
beyond  knowledge.     If,  then,  the  whole  of  experience,  and 
not  merely  its  formal  structure,  is  regarded  as  the  work  of 
mind,  then  it  should  be  possible  to  grasp  the  world  all  at 
once,  from  the  very  centre,  when  once  we  thoroughly  under- 
stand the  constitution  of  mind.     If  the  world  is  a  mind-made 
world,  then  the  key  to  it  will  lie  in  the  motives,  purposes,  or 
plans  by  which  the  mind  is  governed  in  its  operations. 
There  are  two  hints  of  such  a  solution  in  Kant  himself. 


I 


226 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


In  the  first  place  he  refers  to  what  he  calls  the  ''Ideals  of 
Reason."  Our  intellectual  faculties  have,  he  says  in  effect, 
their  own  bias.  They  always  consistently  strive  towards 
an  unconditioned  whole,  an  all-inclusive  and  internally 
coherent  system,  that  has  within  itself  its  reasons  for  being. 
Kant  thought  that  since  the  mind  had  to  depend  on  sense- 
materials  which  it  did  not  itself  produce,  it  could  never 
realize  its  ideal.  But  once  this  notion  is  abandoned,  and  the 
mind  is  conceived  to  be  self-contained,  supplying  its  own  raw 
materials  as  well  as  the  manufactured  product,  we  must 
suppose  that  it  does  realize  its  ideal.  I  say  we  must  suppose 
so;  for  it  still  remains  a  regrettable  fact  that  the  ideal  is  not 
realized  within  the  Hmits  of  human  or  finite  knowledge. 

If  we  follow  this  clue  in  Kant,  we  get  one  kind  of  meta- 
physical ideaUsm,  a  kind  that  might  be  called  logical,  and 
that  is  best  represented  by  Hegel.  The  intellect,  governed 
by  its  own  proper  love  of  systematic  wholeness,  creates  the 
world.  The  world  is  the  consummation  of  reason.  The 
world  is  to  be  understood  by  analyzing  reason  in  its  essence, 
and  then  tracing  it  through  its  manifestations. 

Kant's  other  metaphysical  suggestion  is  to  be  found  in  the 
doctrine  which  he  called  ''The  Primacy  of  the  Practical 
Reason."  He  meant  that  the  moral  consciousness  goes 
deeper  than  the  theoretical  consciousness.  Spirit,  as  it  is 
known  in  man,  is  both  a  knower  of  nature  and  a  doer  of 
duty;  but  it  is  primarily  a  doer  of  duty.  Assuming,  then, 
as  before,  that  thought  makes  nature,  we  should  look  for  the 
deeper  explanation  both  of  thought  and  of  its  product,  in 
the  moral  will.  This  is  the  clue  which  Fichte  followed.  He 
said  that  a  moral  agent,  called  upon  to  do  his  duty,  must 
have  an  external  world  in  which  to  do  it.  It  is  as  though  we 
were  to  say,  "If  there  were  no  physical  world,  it  would  be 
necessary  to  invent  one."  The  ultimate  moral  will,  being 
prior  to  everything  else,  does  invent  one.  Thought  is  the 
inventor  it  employs.  Thought  contrives  the  order  of  nature 
in  the  interest  of  a  will  that  must  do  its  duty.  Or,  nature  is 
a  moral  necessity. 

Thus  Kant's  philosophy  is  transformed  into  a  spiritualistic 


KANT  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 


227 


metaphysics.  There  is  no  longer  anything  unknown  or 
alien  to  spirit.  The  world,  as  a  whole,  and  in  its  ultimate 
derivation,  is  the  construction  of  spirit;  just  as  Kant  thought 
to  be  the  case  in  a  more  limited  way  with  nature.  Thus 
philosophy  proposes  to  reach  the  very  "Back  of  Things," 
and  to  discover  that  it  is  thought  or  moral  will.  By  analyz- 
ing these  one  obtains  the  key  to  reality,  —  a  libretto  by 
which  to  follow  and  grasp  the  whole  show  of  experience. 

III.  THE  ABSOLUTE 

I.   Monism.     We  have  now  to  consider  the  reasons  which 
impel  this  philosophy  to  speak  of  ''the  Absolute."     In  the 
last  chapter  we  have  already  seen  that  the  logic  of  Kantian- 
ism moves  irresistably  toward  monism.     The  reason  is  to  be 
found  in  the  character  of  our  knowledge  of  nature.     Nature 
is  one  temporal,  spatial,  causal,  and  otherwise  interrelated 
system.     If  this  system  is  put  into  nature  by  mind,  then  it 
must  be  by  one  mind  carrying  it  out  consistently.     Science 
claims  to  know  laws  which  hold  of  nature  universally;  which 
is  equivalent  to  claiming  to  know  nature  once  and  for  all, 
in  a  manner  that  nature  can  never  possibly  belie,  and  which 
must  be  confirmed  by  the  judgment  of  every  other  knower. 
Our  knowledge  of  nature,  in  short,  is  such  that  there  can  be 
only  one  knowledge  of  nature.     If  it  is  the  knowledge  of 
nature,  as  Kant  thinks,  that  puts  nature  together,  then  there 
can  be  only  one  such  nature-builder.     Or,  to  put  the  matter 
somewhat  differently,  when  we  know  nature  we  feel  that  the 
truths  about  it,  although  they  are  formed  by  the  mind,  are 
nevertheless  independent  of  our  merely  private  opinions. 
There  must  be  then  a  universal  mind  whose  forming  of 
truths  about  nature  is  authoritative  and  final. 

With  the  logical  ideaUsts  this  universal  and  authoritative 
mind  is  a  great  impersonal  thinking  controlled  by  the  ideal 
peculiar  to  thinking,  namely  wholeness  or  systematic  unity. 
There  can  be  only  one  standard  thinking,  in  which  the  nature 
of  thought  is  wholly  realized. 

"Logic,  or  the  spirit  of  totality,"  says  Professor  Bosanquet,  "is 
the  clue  to  reality,  value  and  freedom.  .  .  .  The  logical  spirit,  the 


228 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


tendency  of  parts  to  self-transcendence  and  absorption  in  wholes, 
is  the  birth-impulse  of  initiative,  as  it  is  the  Ufe-blood  of  stable 
existence.  And  the  degree  to  which  this  spirit  is  incarnate  in  any 
world  or  system  is  one  with  the  value,  the  satisfactoriness  and 
reaUty  by  which  such  a  system  must  be  estimated,  as  also  with  the 
creative  effort,  by  which  it  must  be  initiated."  ^ 

The  world  possesses  superlatively  this  character  of  whole- 
ness which  distinguishes  what  Bosanquet  calls  the  '^  concrete 
universal,"  or  the  ^'individual,"  and  which  qualifies  a  thing 
to  exist. 

^'A  world  or  cosmos  is  a  system  of  members,  such  that  every 
member,  being  ex  hypothesi  distinct,  nevertheless  contributes  to 
the  unity  of  the  whole  in  virtue  of  the  pecuHarities  which  constitute 
its  distinctness."  ^  j 

The  argument  for  the  Absolute  is  simply  that  there  can  be 
only  one  perfection,  one  maximum.  Every  recognition  of 
incompleteness  is  a  fresh  acknowledgment  and  reaffirmation 
of  the  one  great  system  in  which  everything  is  made  whole: 

''This,  then,  the  positive  and  constructive  principle  of  non- 
contradiction —  in  other  words,  the  spirit  of  the  whole  — is  the 
operative  principle  of  Ufe  as  of  metaphysical  thought.  We  might 
call  it,  as  I  said,  in  general,  the  argument  a  contingentia  mundi,  or 
inference  from  the  imperfection  of  data  and  premises.  And  it  is 
this,  essentially,  and  overlooking  differences  of  degree,  in  virtue  of 
which  alone  we  can  at  all  have  progressive  and  continuous  experi- 
ence, whether  as  inference,  or  as  significant  feeling,  or  as  expansion 
through  action.  It  is  this  through  which  my  perception  of  the 
earth's  surface  makes  one  system  with  my  conception  of  the  Anti- 
podes, or  the  emotion  attending  the  parental  instinct  passes  into 
the  wise  tenderness  of  the  civiUzed  parent,  and  the  instinct  itself, 
as  we  are  told,  develops  into  the  whole  structure  of  social  benefi- 
cence. And  it  is  this,  only  further  pursued,  that  forces  us  to  the 
conception  of  the  Absolute.  .  .  .  This,  then,  is  the  fundamental 
nature  of  the  inference  to  the  absolute;  the  passage  from  the 
contradictory  and  unstable  in  all  experience  aUke  to  the  stable  and 
satisfactory."^  /:f>         '? 

1  The  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  pp.  23,  24. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  37- 

3  Ibid.y  pp.  267-268. 


KANT  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 


229 


If  the  monistic  outcome  is  inevitable  in  the  case  of  the 
logical  type  of  idealism,  it  is  no  less  so  in  the  case  of  the 
ethical  type.     And  once  more  the  unity  of  the  world-spirit 
reflects  the  unity  of  nature.     In  this  view  nature  is  created 
by  the  moral  will  as  providing  the  necessary  arena  for  action 
and  materials  for  achievement.     Society  and  history,  too, 
according  to  Fichte,  are  to  be  explained  morally,  as  provid- 
ing the  human  relations  necessary  for  the  cultivation  of 
virtue.     But  as  there  is  one  nature  and  one  history,  so  there 
must  be  one  moral  will  which  created  them.     The  result  is 
that  Fichte  and  all  Fichteans  conceive  of  the  world-ground  as 
Absolute  Moral  Ego,  or  Over-individual  Will.     This  outcome 
is  especially  interesting  because,  as  we  know,  the  moralistic 
strain  in  this  view  would,  if  left  to  itself,  conduce  to  individu- 
alism and  pluralism.     It  testifies  eloquently  to  the  strength  of 
the  monistic  trend  in  Kantianism  that  it  should  in  this  case 
have  imposed  upon  philosophy  so  extraordinary,  not  to  say 
monstrous,  a  conception,  as  an  impersonal  moral  will. 

2.  The  Absolute  as  Known  a  priori.  It  is  clear  from  what 
has  already  been  said  that  the  absolute  is  something  which 
is  inferred  rather  than  something  which  is  given  in  experi- 
ence. In  personal  idealism  spirit  is  a  fact,  given  in  a  peculiar 
way,  but  given  none  the  less.  But  the  Absolute  is  something 
that  is  invoked  in  answer  to  certain  supposed  logical  necessi- 
ties. Indeed,  appearances  are  all  against  it.  It  is  this 
character  of  absolutism  that  Mr.  Russell  has  in  mind  when 
he  makes  the  following  statement: 

"Modern  philosophy,  from  Descartes  onwards,  though  not 
bound  by  authority  like  that  of  the  Middle  Ages,  still  accepted 
more  or  less  uncritically  the  Aristotelian  logic.  Moreover,  it  still 
believed,  except  in  Great  Britain,  that  a  priori  reasoning  could 
reveal  otherwise  undiscoverable  secrets  about  the  universe,  and 
could  prove  reality  to  be  quite  different  from  what,  to  direct 
observation,  it  appears  to  be.  It  is  this  belief,  rather  than  any 
particular  tenets  resulting  from  it,  that  I  regard  as  the  distinguish- 
ing characteristic  of  the  classical  tradition,  and  as  hitherto  the 
main  obstacle  to  a  scientific  attitude  in  philosophy."  ^ 

»  "The  Classical  Tradition  in  Philosophy,"  in  his  Scientific  Method  in 
Philosophy,  pp.  5-6. 


230 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


In  SO  far  as  we  attempt  to  know  at  all,  so  absolutism 
teaches  us,  we  are  bound  to  assume  that  the  world  is  intel- 
ligible or  rational.  We  may  therefore  know  what  the  world 
is  on  the  whole  if  we  simply  think  out  in  advance  what  it 
must  be  in  order  to  be  intelligible  or  rational.  Mere  facts 
need  not  embarrass  us  in  the  least.  We  may  even  go  so  far, 
with  Mr.  Bradley,  for  example,  as  to  deny  virtually  all  the 
facts,  and  condemn  them  as  "were  appearances,''  because 
unfortunately,  they  are  not  congenial  to  the  intellect.^  Thus 
this  philosophy  enjoys  many  of  the  Uberties  of  a  dogmatic  or 
revealed  religion.  The  report  which  science  renders  of  the 
brutal  facts  of  experience  may  be  ignored  in  the  name  of  a 
higher  authority. 

Metaphysical  knowledge  assumes  a  form  which  is  in  the 
last  analysis  more  like  faith  than  scientific  knowledge.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  even  in  Kant's  view  science  was 
answerable  to  the  data  of  science.  It  had  to  accept  these  as 
they  came,  and  was  privileged  only  to  impose  a  certain 
formal  arrangement  upon  them.  But  in  absolute  idealism 
facts  as  something  externally  imposed  on  the  mind  drop  out 
altogether.  Faith,  in  Kant's  view,  was  believing  what  one's 
inward  nature  required.  So  in  absolute  idealism  knowledge 
is  affirming  what  one's  rational  constitution  requires.  My 
constitution  as  a  rational  being  issues  a  sort  of  categorical 
imperative  with  which  all  my  thinking,  judging  and  believ- 
ing must  comply;  and  pursuing  the  truth  means  not  sub- 
mitting to  the  facts  as  I  find  them,  but  being  faithful  to  the 
inward  dictates  of  my  reason. 

3.  The  Absolute  as  Value.  Although  the  point  has 
already  come  incidentally  to  Hght,  I  wish  next  exphcitly  to 
note  that  the  Absolute  is  not  merely  the  ultimate  being,  but 
at  the  same  time  the  supreme  value.  When  spirit  is  installed 
as  the  general  creative  principle,  the  next  step  is  to  discover 
some  master-motive  in  spirit.  Since  spirit  makes  the  world, 
the  explanation  of  the  world  will  lie  in  the  purpose  which 
actuates  spirit.  The  world  is  to  be  construed  as  what  spirit 
would  have  it  to  be,  as  the  perfect  work  of  spirit.     This  is 

^  Cf.  his  Appearance  and  Reality,  passim. 


KANT  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 


231 


indispensable  to  the  very  argument  for  idealism.  We  reach 
the  Absolute,  as  we  have  seen,  by  completing  our  incomplete- 
ness, by  thinking  what  would  be  the  perfect  sequel  to  our 
imperfection.  If  the  world  is  the  free  and  unhampered 
creation  of  spirit,  if  it  is  explained  entirely  in  terms  of  the 
requirements  of  spirit,  then  it  will  be  the  maximum  or 
supreme  expression  of  spirit.  We  have  only  to  conceive  the 
absolutely  ideal,  and  then  affirm  that.  For  logical  idealism, 
which  is  the  dominant  type,  this  perfection  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  an  all-inclusive,  thoroughly  consistent  and  highly 
unified  system,  the  paragon  of  system  —  all  that  the  most 
systematic  of  systems  could  possibly  be. 

The  world,  then,  is  not  merely  the  supreme  reality,  but 
it  is  also  the  supreme  type  of  value.  Aesthetic  enjoyment 
is  a  revelation  of  the  same  value. 

"A  really  strong  and  healthy  emotion,"  says  Bosanquet, 
"demands  for  its  embodiment  and  orderly  variety,  a  precise  and 
careful  fitting  of  part  to  party  the  accurate  and  living  logic  that 
constitutes  the  austerity,  which  is  an  aspect  of  all  beauty."  ^ 

Spirit  is  better  than  matter,  because  *Hhe  characteristic 
of  the  spiritual  in  its  proper  nature  is  inwardness,"  which  is 
*' diversity  without  dissociation,"  and  which  is  *^in  contrast 
with  the  character  of  space  in  which  objects  appear  as  outside 
one  another."  ^  Individuality  is  valuable  because  "its  posi- 
tive nature  is  ruined  if  anything  is  added  or  taken  away."  ^ 
And  for  the  same  reason,  as  we  shall  see  presently,  a  political 
society  is  valuable,  because  it  has  its  own  organic,  indivisible 
wholeness.  Thus  wholeness,  integrity,  organicity  are  at  one 
and  the  same  time  the  characters  of  reality  and  the  norms 
of  aesthetic,  moral,  political  and  religious  value. 

The  same  thing  is  the  case  even  more  unmistakably  with 
idealism  of  the  Fichtean  type.  The  ultimate  reality  is  will 
governed  by  duty.  But  this  doing  of  what  the  inward 
imperative  requires  is  not  only  the  germinating  principle 
of  reality,  it  is  also  the  type-value.     Truth  and  citizenship 

*  Social  and  International  Ideals^  p.  93. 

2  Bosanquet:  The  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  pp.  72-73. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  68. 


J 


232 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


are  primarily  duties.  Beauty,  which  does  not  readily  con- 
form to  this  standard  of  value,  tended  to  find  little  recogni- 
tion in  the  Fichtean  scheme,  and  this  was  one  of  the  chief 
grounds  of  attack  on  the  part  of  Fichte's  idealistic  critics. 
The  logical  type  of  ideaUsm  has  tended  to  prevail  over  the 
ethical  type  because  the  conception  of  organic  unity  serves 
better  as  a  unifying  ideal  under  which  to  subserve  all  the 
values,  than  does  the  narrower  and  more  specific  conception 

of  duty. 

We  have,  then,  brought  to  light  two  most  important 
theses  regarding  value  that  I  wish  to  recapitulate  and  em- 
phasize for  future  reference.  In  the  first  place,  in  absolute 
idealism,  reality  is  conceived  to  be  the  very  incarnation  of 
supreme  value.  This  I  shall  speak  of  later  as  "absolute 
optimism."  In  the  second  place,  all  values  are  conceived 
of  as  of  that  one  type  which  is  represented  by  the  universe 
as  a  whole.    This  I  shall  speak  of  later  as  "  the  monism  of 

values." 

4.  Man  the  Microcosm.  Finally  a  word  as  to  the  rela- 
tion of  man  to  the  Absolute.  It  is  evident  that  in  this 
philosophy  man  gets  a  sort  of  vicarious  exaltation.  He  is 
not  himself  in  his  private  capacity  the  creator  of  the  world ; 
but  the  world  is  created  by  his  kind  of  reality,  and  by  a 
corporate  being  in  which  he  participates. 

This  philosophy  draws  its  only  analogues  of  the  Absolute 
from  the  ''higher"  activities  of  man.  Thus  in  *' self-con- 
sciousness, the  fullest  form  of  consciousness  which  we 
experience,"  Bosanquet  proposes  to  look  for  *' something 
which  furnishes  a  clue  to  the  typical  strmiure  of  reality  ^  ^ 
Human  life  in  its  more  advanced  phases,  in  thinking,  moral 
conduct  and  the  appreciation  of  beauty,  is  reality  taken  *'at 
the  richest  point  of  its  development  in  experience,"  and  by 
this  reality  is  to  be  judged.^  As  I  work  out  my  life  and  think 
out  my  world,  so  the  Absolute  in  his  more  perfect  and 
complete  way,  works  out  his  life  and  thinks  out  his  world  — 

*  Op,  cU.,p.  221.     Italics  mine. 

*  Bosanquet:  "Realism  and  Metaphysic,"  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  XXVI 

(1917)1  P-  9. 


KANT  AND  THE  ABSOLUTE 


n?> 


which  is  the  world.  The  result  of  this  view  is  that  self-study, 
the  biography  of  the  inner  life,  is  thought  to  have  a  certain 
metaphysical  validity,  as  a  microcosmic  or  small-scale 
representation  of  the  Absolute.  It  is  this  aspect  of  the  matter 
which  Mr.  Santayana  has  most  prominently  in  mind,  when 
he  speaks  of  this  transcendental  idealism  as  a  form  of 
egotism : 

*'It  studies  the  perspectives  of  knowledge  as  they  radiate  from 
the  self;  it  is  a  plan  of  those  avenues  of  inference  by  which  our 
ideas  of  things  must  be  reached,  if  they  are  to  afiford  any  systematic 
or  distant  vistas.  .  .  .  Knowledge,  it  says,  has  a  station,  as  in  a 
watch  tower;  [it  is'^always  seated  here  and  now,  in  the  self  of  the 
moment.  The  past  and  the  future,  things  inferred  and  things 
conceived,  lie  around  it,  painted  as  upon  a  panorama.  They 
cannot  be  lighted  up  save  by  some  centrifugal  ray  of  attention  and 
present  interest,  by  some  active  operation  of  the  mind."  ^ 

This  account  of  the  matter  is  correct  in  that  it  suggests 
that  in  absolute  idealism  the  world  is  conceived  to  develop 
outward  from  a  self  —  to  be  literally  self -centered.  It  fails, 
however,  sufficiently  to  emphasize  the  thesis  that  the  cosmic 
self  is  an  activity  governed  by  its  own  peculiar  motives,  the 
supreme  motives  of  spirit;  and  that  the  panoramic  world  is 
therefore  a  work  of  art  to  be  understood  as  the  outward 
expression  of  these  motives.  This  thesis  appears  most 
clearly  in  the  Fichtean  version,  where  the  world  is  generated 
by  a  Dutiful  Will,  and  therefore  the  complete  and  inevitable 
rendering  of  the  moral  motive.  In  this  case,  too,  whenever 
a  finite  mortal  does  his  duty,  he  may  feel  that  he  is  enacting 
in  his  own  person  the  very  deed  that  creates  the  world.  As 
he  acknowledges  nature  in  his  moral  dealings  with  it,  he  is 
reaffirming  the  Absolute's  "Let  there  be  Nature";  as  he 
acknowledges  his  neighbor  for  the  sake  of  justice,  he  coin- 
cides with  the  Will  which  forms  society  as  the  sphere  of 
virtue. 

So  there  springs  from  idealism  man's  romantic  belief  in 
himself;  the  pride  that  claims  the  world  in  the  name  of  those 
spiritual  powers  which  are  man's  prerogatives.     It  is  a  short 

*  Winds  of  Doctrine,  p.  194. 


234 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


step  from  believing  that  you  are  like  the  Absolute,  or  a  part 
of  the  Absolute,  to  believing  that  you  are  the  Absolute. 
Then  looking  upon  nature  and  history  as  yours,  you  may  be 
raised  to  a  new  level  of  faith  and  a  new  ecstacy  of  inspiration. 
Contemplating  your  work  you  may  say,  to  use  the  words 
which  Santayana  has  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  romantic 
hero: 


"  What  a  genius  I  am  ! 
such  stuff  in  me  ?"  ^ 


Who  would  have  thought  there  was 


*  Op.  cit.,  p.  199. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
ABSOLUTE  OPTIMISM 

By  ''absolute  optimism  "  I  mean  the  view  which  would 
affirm  that  degrees  of  reaUty  coincide  with  degrees  of  good- 
ness, that  the  more  real  a  thing  is  the  better  it  is,  and  that 
therefore  the  ultimate  and  all-comprehending  reality  is  at 
the  same  time  the  summit  of  perfection.  This  thesis,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  is  affirmed  by  absolute  idealism.  Such 
a  view  is  bound  to  find  a  value,  however  humble,  in  every- 
thing. It  is  the  all-saving,  all-admiring,  or  at  least  all- 
condoning  view,  most  tersely  expressed  in  Pope's  familiar 
line,  ''Whatever  is,  is  best."  Whatever  is,  is  at  any  rate 
more  or  less  good;  or  good  so  far  as  it  goes.  The  facts  which 
are  commonly  judged  to  be  evil,  must  either  be  denied  to  be 
facts,  or  some  sense  must  be  contrived  in  which  they  may 
be  said  to  have  at  least  some  little  good  in  them.  With  the 
moral  and  religious  implications  of  this  view,  and  with  the 
peculiar  difficulties  that  beset  it,  we  shall  deal  in  the  present 
chapter.  In  the  interests  of  simplicity  and  of  emphasis  I 
shall  deal  mainly  with  what  happens  in  such  a  view  to  moral 
values.  And  to  that  end  I  shall  first  summarize  the  two 
conceptions  of  moral  value  that  are  most  prominently  identi- 
fied with  moral  idealism. 


I.    ETHICAL  IDEALS 

I.  Duty  and  Freedom.  The  Fichtean  influence  in  ideal- 
ism emphasizes,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Kantian  conception  of 
duty.  Right  conduct  is  conduct  that  is  actuated  by  moral 
conviction.  What  a  moral  agent  judges  that  he  ought  to  do, 
is  what  it  is  right  to  do.  Doing  what  one  judges  that  one 
ought  to  do,  is  according  to  Fichte  the  supreme  thing  in  life; 
and  as  the  supreme  thing  in  life  therefore  the  supreme  thing 
in  the  universe.    The  object  of  nature  is  to  provide  the  crude 

•23s 


236 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


material  and  the  external  resistance  which  duty  needs;  and 
the  object  of  society  is  to  provide  the  necessary  persons  in 
whom  justice,  or  the  mutual  respect  of  autonomous  moral 
agents,  may  be  dramatized.  All  of  the  activities  of  a  com- 
munity, such  as  industry  and  education,  must  be  subordi- 
nated to  the  end  of  cultivating  the  moral  consciousness,  so 
that  all  of  humanity  may  be  brought  to  the  level  of  conscious 
participation  in  this  moral  drama.  In  so  far  as  this  is  the 
case  individuals  lose  their  isolation  and  become  actuated  by 
one  moral  will;  which  may  be  the  will  of  a  morally  self- 
conscious  state,  or  that  underlying  moral  will  of  the  universe, 
that  Absolute  Moral  Ego,  which  is  the  ground  of  nature  and 
history  as  a  whole. 

This  ethical  ideal  is  very  commonly  spoken  of  as  the  ideal 
of  ''freedom";  but  in  this  case  the  term  ''freedom''  is  used 
in  a  very  special  sense  which  we  must  take  pains  to  under- 
stand. It  may  strike  us  as  paradoxical  or  as  hypocritical 
that  a  people  so  rigidly  organized,  so  thoroughly  disciplined, 
and  so  respectful  of  authority,  as  the  Germans,  should  pro- 
claim themselves  the  devotees  of  freedom.  But  this  is 
because  we  are  accustomed  to  use  the  term  in  wholly  different 
senses.  Thus,  for  example,  freedom  doubtless  suggests  to 
some  of  us  doing  as  one  pleases,  following  the  momentary 
impulse  or  incHnation.  But  the  Fichtean  thinks  of  impulse 
as  the  tyranny  of  nature,  as  when  one  speaks  of  being 
enslaved  by  appetite.  In  this  view  true  freedom  means 
mastery  of  appetite  by  reason,  and  the  consequent  power  to 
do  as  one  judges  best,  even  with  the  strongest  natural  in- 
clination to  the  contrary.  Freedom,  in  this  Fichtean  sense, 
means  doing  what  one  soberly  decides  to  do,  in  the  light  of 
reason.     It  means  making  up  one^s  mind  for  oneself. 

Another  source  of  misunderstanding  is  the  habit  of  asso- 
ciating freedom  with  detachment  or  isolation.  The  free  man 
is  thought  of  as  the  individual  out  of  relation,  standing 
by  himself,  belonging  to  nothing.  But  the  Fichtean  would 
argue  that  isolation  implies  helplessness  and  degradation. 
He  thinks  of  freedom  as  a  definite  sphere  or  opportunity  such 
as  can  only  belong  to  members  of  a  system,  under  the  rule  of 


ABSOLUTE   OPTIMISM 


237 


law.  And  he  thinks,  furthermore,  that  true  individuality 
consists  not  in  separation,  but  in  playing  a  part  in  a  whole 
which  is  more  worthy  than  anything  which  one  could  possibly 
be  by  oneself.  Being  included  in  a  whole  does  not  impair 
one's  freedom  provided  one  adopts  that  whole  as  one's  end. 
In  other  words  one  may  freely  subordinate  oneself.  De- 
liberate submission  to  general  laws  or  larger  corporate 
purposes  is  not  contrary  to  freedom,  but  is  the  very  act  of 
freedom.  For  to  act  from  reason  rather  than  impulse, 
means  to  act  from  principle;  and  a  principle  will  have  an 
authority  beyond  oneself  and  will  unite  one  with  all  other 
rational  beings  within  the  same  jurisdiction. 

Thus  freedom  in  this  teaching  is  not  lax,  but  rigorous; 
not  easy,  but  hard;  not  disintegrating,  but  unifying.  This, 
I  take  it,  is  what  Professor  Troeltsch  means  by  "German 
freedom,"  when  he  says:  "  German  freedom  came  into  being, 
according  to  Kant's  conception  of  it,  as  the  freedom  of 
spontaneous  recognition  of  duty  and  right,  and  in  the  romantic 
conception  of  an  infinite  wealth  of  culture,  individual,  but  in 
all  cases  mutually  complementary."  ^ 

2.  Self-realization.  For  two  reasons  the  Fichtean  con- 
ception of  moral  value  has  not  proved  wholly  satisfactory  to 
idealists.  In  spite  of  what  has  just  been  said  it  possesses  a 
certain  harshness.  Although  both  Kant  and  Fichte  insist 
that  the  moral  agent  is  his  own  master,  in  that  he  is  himself 
the  authority  that  imposes  the  categorical  imperative, 
nevertheless  moral  value  is  made  to  consist  essentially  in 
obedience.  Furthermore,  the  view  is  too  narrow.  If  moral 
value  is  conceived  exclusively  in  terms  of  duty,  and  then  set 
up  as  the  supreme  value,  it  becomes  necessary  to  deny  or 
disparage  other  values,  such  as  aesthetic  value.  The  genius 
who,  following  the  promptings  of  inspiration,  or  of  taste, 
creates  an  immortal  work  of  art,  the  great  man  who  from  love 
of  power  creates  a  new  epoch  in  history  —  these  would  have 
to  be  condemned  because  they  were  a  bit  inattentive  to  the 
categorical  imperative.  A  new  formula  is  needed  which 
shall  save  the  Kantian  idea  of  duty,  but  shall  be  flexible 

*  In  The  Ideals  of  Modern  Germany ,  p.  87. 


238 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


enough  to  provide  for  other  praiseworthy  things  as  well. 
This  new  and  superbly  ambiguous  formula  is  self-realization. 

Self-realization  in  the  idealistic  sense  has,  like  freedom,  to 
be  discriminated  from  other  familiar  meanings.  There  is 
a  naturalistic  sense  of  self-realization,  common,  for  example, 
among  the  Greek  moralists.  In  this  sense  self-realization 
means  being  the  finest  possible  individual  instance  of  the 
animal  species  man.  The  human  species  has  its  own 
characteristic  points.  To  realize  oneself  means,  then,  to 
excel  in  these  points,  to  be  superlatively  human.  To  be  a 
good  man,  in  this  sense,  would  mean  that  one  might  be 
chosen  as  a  good  specimen  by  which  to  demonstrate  terres- 
trial life  at  its  best  to  some  visitor  from  Mars.  But  this  is 
not  idealism ;  because  in  idealism  man  is  construed  not  as  an 
animal  species,  a  type  of  creature,  but  as  a  vehicle  of  the 
spiritual  principle  in  the  world. 

In  another  sense,  which  appears,  for  example,  in  the 
philosophy  of  Spinoza  and  in  an  aspect  of  Christianity,  to 
realize  oneself  means  to  merge  one's  meagre  individuahty  in 
the  fuller  being  of  God.  He  who  thus  loses  his  little  self, 
shall  save  his  greater  self  or  live  more  abundantly.  This 
motive  of  universalism  and  mystical  union  is  a  factor  in  the 
ideaHstic  view.  But  it  is  still  not  the  heart  of  the  matter. 
To  reach  that,  one  must  recall  that  according  to  absolute 
idealism  the  human  individual  is  a  microcosm.  When  he 
does  his  duty,  or  exercises  his  reason  he  is  acting  in  unison 
with  the  creative  spirit.  Just  in  proportion  as  one  acts  from 
within,  just  in  proportion  as  one  acts  freely,  dutifully  or 
rationally,  without  being  constrained  either  by  external 
force  or  by  natural  impulse,  just  in  that  proportion  is  one's 
act  an  act  of  spirit,  and  therefore  an  act  of  that  one  spirit 
which  is  absolutely  authoritative.  Pure  spirit  can  do  no 
evil,  and  neither  can  a  man  who  acts  according  to  the  spirit- 
ual principle,  that  is,  self-consciously  and  autonomously. 

The  result  of  this  teaching  is  a  formalism  even  more  barren 
and  more  dangerous  than  that  of  Kant.  Kant  said :  Do  what 
you  judge  to  be  your  duty.  But  though  in  principle  this 
form  may  be  attached  to  any  kind  of  conduct,  as  a  matter  of 


ABSOLUTE  OPTIMISM 


239 


j 


fact  it  is  associated  in  most  human  minds  with  certain  tradi- 
tional moral  precepts  which  safeguard  the  well-being  of 
society.  The  form  of  self-reaUzation  has  no  such  fixed 
association  with  any  body  of  precepts.  If  anything  it  is 
associated  with  the  code  of  selfishness  and  privilege.  In 
any  case  there  is  nothing  which  one  may  not  do  in  the  name 
of  self.  The  mandates:  "Do  what  your  very  innermost 
self  wills  to  do,''  ''Let  your  act  express  your  whole  or  deeper 
self,"  may  justify  any  kind  of  action  whatever.  There  is 
nothing,  however  hurtful  to  others  or  at  variance  with  tra- 
ditional morality,  that  some  moral  agent  may  not  do  with 
the  most  whole-hearted  conviction.  Indeed,  one  of  the 
commonest  pretexts  for  self-indulgence  and  the  violation  of 
the  moral  opinion  of  mankind,  is  the  plea  that  one's  precious 
self  requires  it.  A  man  with  a  ''self  "  may  easily  become  a 
common  nuisance  or  even  a  dangerous  paranoiac. 

The  view  obtains  a  specious  plausibility  from  the  supposed 
fact  that  all  action  is  necessarily  self-regarding.  Thus 
Nietzsche,  for  example,  argues  that  altruism  is  self-contra- 
dictory since  the  altruistic  man  professes  to  be  bestowing 
good  on  the  other  party,  while  in  fact  he  condemns  the  other 
party  to  be  the  ignominious  recipient  of  benefaction  and 
reserves  for  himself  the  loftier  role  of  benefactor.  If  it  is 
more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive,  then  the  truly  generous 
man  would  devote  himself  altogether  to  receiving.  The 
idealist  Professor  Pringle-Pattison ,  quoting  Nietzsche  with 
approval,  adds  that  "in  a  sense,  the  moral  centre  and  the 
moral  motive  must  always  ultimately  be  self,  the  perfection 
of  the  self."  ^  The  fallacy  in  this  reasoning  lies  in  begging 
the  very  question  at  issue,  and  supposing  that  the  altruistic 
man  is  really  moved  by  a  fondness  for  altruism.  The  really 
altruistic  man  isn't  concerned  about  himself  at  all,  but  is 
thinking  of  the  other  person's  good.  And  the  altruistic 
receiver  of  benefits  is  not  thinking  of  his  pious  and  humble 
role,  but  is  filled  with  gratitude. 

The  viciousness  of  this  ethical  theory  lies  in  the  fact  that 
the  moral  agent  is  encouraged  to  ignore  every  form  of  ex- 

*  Cf.  Nietzsche:  Human,  All  too  Human,  I,  137-138. 


I 


240 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


ternal  check.  It  is  a  sort  of  ethics  of  inspiration.  No  one 
else  can  be  a  judge  of  one's  action,  even  the  injured  party. 
For  all  that  is  asked  is  that  the  action  should  be  deemed  by 
the  agent  himself  to  spring  from  his  deeper  spiritual  being. 
Whether  it  does  or  not,  only  he,  within  the  secrecy  of  his  own 
self -consciousness,  can  know.  There  can  be  absolutely  no 
guarantee  that  action  so  motivated  and  so  justified  shall 
agree  with  the  safety  and  well-being  of  those  who  happen  to 
be  affected  by  it.  As  Professor  Dewey  has  said  apropos  of 
Eucken's  self-realizationist  version  of  justice: 

''A  justice  which,  irrespective  of  the  determination  of  social 
well-being,  proclaims  itself  as  an  irresistible  spiritual  impulsion 
possessed  of  the  force  of  a  primitive  passion,  is  nothing  but  a  primi- 
tive passion  clothed  with  a  spiritual  title  so  that  it  is  protected  from 
having  to  render  an  account  of  itself."  ^ 

II.     VALUE   FITTED   TO   FACT 

We  have  already  observed  that  absolute  idealism  asserts 
the  coincidence  of  reality  and  value.  That  whole-of-things 
which  is  called  the  Absolute  is  fully  real,  the  only  instance  of 
unqualified  reality,  and  is  also  utterly  perfect,  the  only 
instance  of  impeccable  value.  This  conjunction  of  ideals, 
the  most-real  and  the  most-good,  is  effected  through  suppos- 
ing that  the  real  world  is  the  consummate  product  of  the 
good-pursuing  activity  of  spirit. 

Such  a  conclusion  has  a  very  comforting  and  inspiring  ring. 
To  be  assured  that  reality  as  it  is,  is  not  only  good,  but  the 
very  maximum  of  goodness  —  to  be  assured  that  nothing  is 
too  good  to  be  true  —  should  be  sufficiently  optimistic  to  suit 
anybody.  But  before  congratulating  ourselves  prematurely 
let  us  analyze  the  returns  a  little  more  closely.  When  one 
is  promised  the  realization  of  one's  ideals,  it  is  ordinarily 
understood  that  the  ideals  shall  remain  unaltered  while  the 
reaUty  is  brought  up  abreast  of  them.  It  is  not  supposed 
that  the  ideals  will  meet  the  reaUty  half  way.  It  is  easy  to 
give  a  man  all  that  he  wants  if  you  can  control  his  wants. 

*  German  Philosophy  and  Politics,  p.  56.  The  reference  is  to  Eucken's 
Meaning  and  Value  of  Life^  trans,  by  Gibson,  p.  104. 


ABSOLUTE  OPTIMISM 


24T 


In  other  words,  there  are  two  ways  of  having  ideals  realized, 
one  is  by  squaring  reality  with  the  ideals,  and  the  other  is  by 
squaring  the  ideals  with  reality.  And  it  makes  a  great  deal 
of  difference,  in  the  case  before  us,  which  of  these  methods 
has  been  employed.    Let  us  see. 

The  idealistic  starts  out  with  some  notion  of  value,  such 
for  example  as  the  doing  of  one's  duty.  He  then  pro- 
poses to  show  that  reality  is  the  very  incarnation  and  em- 
bodiment of  dutifulness.  Nature,  he  says,  is  there  because 
a  dutiful  will  needs  something  to  act  on.  But  why  just  this 
nature?  Why,  for  example,  just  eighty-three  elements  and 
eight  planets?  It  is  dangerous  to  argue  that  precisely  these 
numbers  are  required  by  duty,  because  science  has  a  trouble- 
some way  of  every  little  while  discovering  that  there  are 
more.  Why  so  much  more  of  nature  than  is  ever  utilized  for 
moral  purposes?  Why  so  much  of  nature  that  proves 
unyielding  and  unpropitious  to  duty?  And  similarly  with 
history  —  why  so  much  of  it  that  is  irrelevant  or  contrary 
to  the  interests  of  morality?  Faced  by  such  facts  the  Fich- 
tean  moral  idealism  proceeds  to  revise  its  conception  of  duty, 
and  even  goes  to  the  incredible  length  of  afi&rming  that  there 
is  a  fundamental  duty  to  will  the  laws  of  nature  or  to  affirm 
whatever  is  so.^  It  is  not  difficult  to  prove  that  the  world 
as  it  is,  is  pre-eminently  a  place  for  the  performance  of  the 
duty  of  agreeing  with  the  world  as  it  is!  But  this  is  cold 
comfort  to  the  man  who  still  cherishes  the  old-fashioned  con- 
ception of  duty  and  had  hoped  to  be  shown  that  the  world 
was  the  incarnation  of  specific  moral  values  such  as  justice 
or  love. 

The  other  type  of  idealism  conceives  the  world  to  be  the 
realization  of  the  ideals  of  reason,  a  perfection  of  thought. 
These  ideals  have  gradually  settled  down  to  one,  the  ideal  of 
coherence  or  systematic  unity,  and  this  looks  suspiciously  as 
though  it  were  dictated  by  the  facts  of  nature.  Indeed  this 
is  virtually  admitted  in  a  recent  idealistic  book  written  by 
Professor  Pringle-Pattison.     This  author  first  protests  that 

»  Cf.  Munsterberg:  Eiernal  Values,  p.  54,  and  Rickert:  Der  Gegenstand  der 
Erkenntniss. 


242 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  only  virtue  in  idealism  lies  in  its  explaining  reality  in 
terms  of  value.  There  is  no  virtue  he  says  in  mere  ''mental- 
ism,"  in  which  the  facts  as  they  are  given  or  described  in 
science  are  merely  rebaptized  in  the  name  of  spirit.  "What 
difference  does  it  make/'  he  asks,  "whether  we  regard  nature 
as  existing  per  se,  or  insist  that  all  her  processes  are  registered 
in  a  mind,  if  that  mind  is  nothing  but  such  a  register  or 
impartial  reflection  of  the  facts?  "  ^  We  are  thus  encouraged 
to  expect  that  idealism  will  set  up  the  peculiar  bias  of  mind 
and  then  show  that  reality  is  partial  to  it.  But  instead  of 
that  we  find  that  mind  is  construed  in  terms  of  the  most 
general  and  abstract  features  of  the  world,  and  then  set  up 
as  the  standard  of  value,  with  which,  as  is  not  surprising, 
reality  may  then  be  shown  to  conform.  "The  nature  of 
reality,"  says  our  author,  "can  only  mean  the  systematic 
structure  discernible  in  its  appearance,  and  .  .  .  this  must 
furnish  us  with  our  ultimate  criterion  of  value."  ^ 

Professor  W.  R.  Sorley,  whose  sympathies  are  idealistic, 
nevertheless  deprecates  this  tendency  in  idealism  to  retain 
only  the  names  of  spirit  and  value,  while  having  abandoned 
the  specific  and  distinctive  things  for  which  these  names 
ordinarily  stand.  In  particular  he  notes  the  tendency  in 
idealism  to  get  away  altogether  from  persons  and  selves, 
while  still  professing  to  take  a  spiritual  view  of  the  world. 
He  is  "puzzled,"  by  the  "species  of  Idealism  in  which 
thought  determinations  are  spoken  of  as  if  they  were  deter- 
minations neither  of  my  thought  nor  of  your  thought  nor  of 
God's  thought,  but  just  of  thought."  ^  He  finds  that  the 
terms  "experience"  and  "idea"  are  especially  popular 
among  ideaUsts  because  they  lend  themselves  to  this  im- 
personal use.  But  it  is  evident  that  if  spirit  be  identified 
with  the  content  of  knowledge,  with  what  we  know  about  the 
world,  then  it  is  mere  redundancy  to  say  that  the  world  is 
spiritual.  So  far  as  there  is  any  victory,  it  is  the  world  which 
has  vanquished  spirit;  for  while  the  world  has  assumed  the 

1  The  Idea  of  God  in  the  Light  of  Recent  Philosophy,  pp.  i99»  200. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  225. 

»  "The  Two  Idealisms,"  Hibbert  Journal,  1904,  p.  713. 


ABSOLUTE  OPTIMISM 


243 


I 
I 


I 


name  of  spirit,  spirit  has  taken  on  the  nature  of  the 
world. 

Another  example  is  afforded  by  Professor  J.  E.  Creighton 
who  is  anxious  to  distinguish  the  true  idealism  from  the  mere 
mentaKsm  or  subjectivism  of  Berkeley.  He  defines  the  true 
or  "speculative  "  idealism  as  follows:  "Its  primary  insight 
...  is  that  the  reality  known  in  experience  is  not  something 
that  merely  'is'  or  possesses  bare  existence,  but  that,  as 
existing  concretely,  it  forms  part  of  a  permanent  system  of 
relation  and  values."  ^ 

It  then  appears  that  Professor  Creighton's  favorite  term, 
in  whose  name  nature  is  identified  with  value,  is  the  term 
"intelligence."  Nature  is  reduced  to  "the  order  of  the 
universe,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  the  order  of  intelli- 
gence." 2  This  order  of  intelligence  is  not,  of  course,  any- 
body's intelligence.  It  is  just  order.  Sometimes  Professor 
Creighton  conjures  with  the  term  "rational,"  which  turns 
out  so  far  as  I  can  see  to  get  all  of  its  meaning  from  the 
structure  or  form  of  sciencse.  Professor  Creighton  "cannot 
help  feeling  that  the  view  of  nature  as  a  uniform  and  per- 
manent system  of  natural  laws  is  a  necessary  element  in  a 
rational  experience."  He  is  "unable  to  conceive  how  there 
could  be  a  rational  life  without  an  apprehension  of  an  objec- 
tive order."  ^  Of  course  he  cannot  help  feeling,  of  course  he 
is  unable  to-conceive,  for  the  very  simple  reason  that  whether 
consciously  or  not  he  has  derived  his  notion  of  rationality  from 
the  system  of  natural  laws  and  the  objective  order!  When 
intelligence  and  rationality  are  thus  defined  in  terms  of  the 
world  as  it  is  known  to  be,  then  there  is  nothing  very  glorious 
after  all  in  the  view  that  the  world  is  perfectly  intelligent  or 
completely  rational. 

The  fact  is  that  idealism  of  this  type  in  arder  to  be  able  to 
assert  the  coincidence  of  the  ideal  and  the  real  has  had  to 
redefine  the  ideal  in  terms  of  the  real.  It  has  yielded  to  this 
pressure  only  gradually,  and  has  continued  with  sincerity 
and  conviction  to  use  the  same  terms  which  it  employed  at 

1  "Two  Types  of  Idealism,"  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  XXVI  (iQi?).  P-  S16. 
*  Op.  cit.,  p.  527.  *  Op,  ciU,  p.  534. 


244 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  outset.  But  in  effect  idealism  is  very  much  like  the 
recent  Treaty  of  Brest-Litovsk.  Reality,  like  the  Germans, 
has  refused  to  budge.  The  idealists,  like  the  Bolsheviki,  have 
steadily  lowered  their  demands  unti  finally  they  have  simply 
endorsed  the  terms  dictated  to  them.  But  while  the  Bol- 
sheviki admit  their  defeat  and  call  it  coercion,  the  idealists 
have  so  gradually  and  unconsciously  reinterpreted  their  own 
demands  that  they  experience  the  elation  of  victory.  As  I 
see  it  the  evolution  of  idealism  consists  in  reshaping  ideals  to 
fit  the  Procrustean  bed  of  facts.  The  idealist  has  less  humor 
than  a  lady  of  my  acquaintance  who  taking  her  place  in  an 
automatic  elevator  found  herself  unable  to  control  it,  and 
was  undecided  whether  to  risk  it  or  get  out  and  walk.  When 
the  elevator  suddenly  began  to  go  up,  taking  her  with  it,  she 
folded  her  hands  and  said  *'I've  decided."  I  feel  that  the 
idealist's  will  is  similarly  ex  post  facto.  He  doesn't  know 
what  to  will  until  he  knows  what  the  world  is  going  to  do  to 
him;  and  then  he  wills  that.  In  name  the  world  then  exe- 
cutes his  will;  but  it  would  be  more  correct  to  say  that  he 
has  no  will,  or  at  any  rate  has  ceased  to  assert  it. 

III.    THE   CONFUSION   OF   VALUES 

I  have  failed  so  far  to  allude  to  a  more  serious  defect  in 
this  idealistic  optimism.  It  is  not  only  hollow,  as  I  have 
already  contended,  but  it  is  misleading  and  confusing. 
Through  its  eagerness  to  identify  reahty  and  value  it  blurs 
and  compromises  human  ideals.  This  effect  is  further 
aggravated  by  what  I  have  termed  its  *' monism  of  values." 
There  is  to  be  only  one  type  of  perfection  into  which  truth, 
goodness,  beauty  and  every  other  good  thing  are  all  resolved. 
Now  I  should  like  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  there  are 
two  ways  of  making  things  look  alike.  One  way  is  by  clear 
discrimination  and  segregation,  classifying  like  with  like. 
The  other  way  is  by  turning  down  the  lights.  In  the  dark, 
it  is  said,  all  cats  are  gray.  So  in  the  twilight  of  ambiguity 
all  ideals  may  look  alike.  But  that  is  only  because  they  have 
all  lost  their  coloring.  The  idealist  in  striving  to  show  that 
reality  satisfies  every  human  aspiration  succeeds  only  by 


ABSOLUTE  OPTIMISM 


245 


I 
I 


eliminating  whatever  is  specific  and  peculiar  in  every  human 
aspiration.  The  result  is  that  you  get  a  sort  of  conjunct 
perfection  which  is  totally  perfect  because  it  is  not  perfect  in 
respect  of  any  one  of  the  definite  standards  of  life. 

In  order,  for  example,  that  everything  in  the  world  shall 
appear  to  be  morally  good,  it  becomes  necessary  to  regard 
moral  goodness  not  as  justice  or  happiness,  but  as  struggle 
and  the  formation  of  character.  It  is  evident  that  things 
are  not  universally  just  or  conducive  to  happiness;  but  you 
can  make  out  a  fairly  good  case  for  the  claim  that  all  things 
are  conducive  to  the  chastening  of  the  soul.  But  even  this 
will  not  do,  because  it  is  too  evident  that  much  struggle  leads 
to  demoralization  and  bitterness.  So  one  tries  again,  and 
contrues  moral  goodness  as  the  interplay  of  spiritual  forces, 
conducing  to  a  dramatic  richness  and  unity  of  Ufe.  Here  the 
moral  ideal  has  gone  by  the  board  altogether  and  an  aesthetic 
ideal  is  put  in  its  place.  But  this  will  not  do  because  there 
is  too  much  of  the  world  that  is  ugly  and  offensive  to  taste. 
So  idealism  is  driven  to  substitute  a  logical  for  an  aesthetic 
ideal,  and  to  reduce  both  goodness  and  beauty  to  the  ideal  of 
systematic  unity.  This  reduction  we  have  already  noted 
in  the  case  of  Bosanquet's  conception  of  ''orderiy  variety."  ^ 
The  diverse  ideals  of  life  are  thus  flattened  down  into  the 
purely  formal  ideal  of  the  intellect;  and  if  one  were  Uterally 
to  apply  this  theory  one  would  judge  conduct  and  art  and 
every  other  thing  by  the  bare  standard  of  consistency. 

To  carry  out  a  monism  of  values  consistently  would  mean 
that  every  good  thing  should  be  expected  to  satisfy  every 
desire  and  aspiration.  A  good  medicine  ought  to  be  pala- 
table; a  good  fuel  ought  to  be  beautiful;  a  good  painting 
ought  to  be  edifying;  all  true  news  ought  to  be  agreeable 
news;  and  whatever  is  morally  right  ought  to  be  true.  If 
one  were  to  try  to  live  on  this  theory  it  is  evident  that  one 
would  never  be  cured,  or  warmed,  or  sensuously  pleased,  or 
informed,  or  improved.  Through  trying  to  get  every  ideal 
realized  at  once,  one  would  be  fairiy  sure  of  getting  none  of 
them  realized. 

^  Cf.  above,  p.  230. 


246 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


The  reduction  of  other  values  to  one  value,  such  as  formal 
unity,  would  not  only  emasculate  and  compromise  practical, 
moral  and  aesthetic  judgments,  but  it  would  have  been  in 
vain  after  all.  For  every  new  conception  of  good  defines  a 
new  conception  of  evil.  If  injustice  and  ugliness  have  been 
in  a  manner  explained  away,  it  is  only  to  leave  in  hand  in 
their  place  the  evil  of  disorder  and  error.  For  these  are  facts 
as  unmistakable  as  the  others.  And  when  the  idealist 
reaches  this  point  he  usually  stops,  and  very  commonly 
acknowledges  that  the  problem  of  error  is  insoluble.  But  if 
so  then  since  all  evil  has  been  converted  into  this  form, 
idealism  is  as  far  as  ever  from  having  justified  the  contention 
that  the  world  is  superlatively  good.  Nothing  remains  but 
to  fall  back  upon  the  dogma  that  somehow  as  Pope  said: 

"All  nature  is  but  art,  unknown  to  thee 
All  chance,  direction  which  thou  canst  not  see; 
All  discord  harmony  not  understood;  ' 

All  partial  evil,  universal  good." 

This  IS  at  best  a  pious  wish.  Since  it  expresses  itself  with 
so  positive  and  confident  an  air,  and  professes  to  enjoy  the 
support  of  unanswerable  reasons,  one  is  tempted  to  call  it  a 
pious  fraud. 

IV.    THE  TOLERANCE   OF  EVIL 

It  should  be  quite  apparent  that  an  absolute  optimism 
must  view  everything  in  the  world  with  a  sort  of  condoning 
tolerance.  One  may  distinguish  some  things  as  better  than 
others,  but  nothing,  if  it  be  real  at  all,  can  be  unmitigatedly 
evil.  One  may  seek  to  subordinate  some  things  to  other 
things,  but  one  cannot  consistently  seek  to  eradicate  or 
annihilate  anything.  Whatever  it  be,  it  somehow  ^'be- 
longs," and  we  must  endeavor  to  see  how  it  fits  in. 

I  shall  take  as  an  illustration  of  this  aspect  of  absolutism  a 
writer  whose  personal  and  national  bias  is  favorable  to 
common  sense  moral  idealism.  Professor  Bosanquet,  just 
because  he  does  instinctively  share  the  repugnance  of  the 
normal  conscience  to  the  wickedness  and  misery  of  the  world, 
serves  peculiarly  well  to  show  the  inward  inconsistency 


ABSOLUTE  OPTIMISM 


247 


between  such  a  conscience  and  the  logic  of  the  idealistic 

optimism. 

There  are,  says  this  writer  two  moral  motives:  one,  the 
motive  of  reform,  prompting  us  to  condemn  evil  utterly; 
the  other,  the  motive  of  philosophy,  prompting  us  to  accept 
the  evil  as  a  necessary  part  of  life. 

"Here,"  he  says,  "we  confront  the  paradox  of  all  ideals.  Prima 
facie  they  present  you  with  a  dilemma.  Either  the  ideal  includes 
the  imperfection  which  it  hopes  to  transcend,  or  it  omits  it.  If  it 
includes  it,  sustains  and  maintains  it,  as  active  beneficence  implies 
preserving  such  miserable  objects  as  it  needs,  then  the  ideal  seems 
no  longer  to  be  an  ideal.  For  it  includes  its  opposite  with  all  its 
imperfections  on  its  head.  But  if  the  ideal  omits  the  evil  which 
is  its  opposite,  then  again  it  seems  to  have  dropped  out  one-half  of 
its  world,  to  be  bankrupt  and  futile  in  dealing  with  its  antagonist, 
to  be  irrelevant  and  superficial,  and  so  once  more  to  be  no  longer 
the  ideal.  ...  We  see,  then,  where  the  dilemma  of  the  ideal  has 
brought  us,  and  always  must  bring  us,  in  charity  as  in  all  goodness, 
in  beauty  as  in  truth.  The  ideal  must  not  sustain  the  evil;  but  it 
must  not  ignore  the  evil.  It  must  include  it  by  transmutation.  .  .  . 
We  have  no  doubt  that  pain  and  badness  are  to  be  fought  against 
and  overcome  so  far  as  in  any  way  possible.  .  .  .  And  we  must 
never  let  this  go.  But,  second,  along  with  this,  we  see  that  good 
and  bad  hardly  seem  to  be  meant  (so  to  speak)  to  be  separated."  ^ 

In  this  passage  it  is  virtually  admitted  that  the  idealistic 
belief  in  the  integral  perfection  of  things,  contradicts  an  out 
and  out  hostility  to  evil.  One  may  speak  of  ''overcoming  " 
it  but  not  of  abolishing  it.  The  good  life  is  a  wrestling  with 
evil,  not  a  killing  of  it.  Without  an  adversary  one  cannot 
wrestle,  so  one  must  not  be  too  rough  with  one's  opponent. 
As  long  as  the  supply  of  evil  is  abundant  one  can  be  fairly 
careless;  but  if  the  supply  were  to  run  low,  how  could  the 
life  of  struggle  be  maintained? 

According  to  this  teaching  even  though  one's  treatment  of 
evil  be  hostile,  one's  thought  about  it  is  kindly.  Like  a 
human  enemy,  if  one  only  knew  it  better,  one  would  arrive 
at  a  sympathetic  understanding  of  it.  Bosanquet  does  not 
propose  the  rough  and  ready  method  of  calling  evil  unreal. 

1  Social  and  International  Ideals,  pp.  98-99,  100. 


248 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


No,  it  is  real,  and  like  everything  real,  it  is  necessary;   like 
everything  necessary,  it  is  somehow  good: 

"On  the  view  here  accepted,  finiteness,  pain,  and  evil  are  essential 
features  of  Reality,  and  belong  to  an  aspect  of  it  which  leaves  its 
marks  even  on  perfection.  The  view  that  they  are  illusions  says 
that  if  we  knew  everything  and  could  feel  everything  we  should  see 
and  feel  that  there  was  no  pain  or  evil  at  all.  The  view  that  con- 
tradiction is  actual,  and,  more  than  that,  is  an  exaggeration  of  a 
feature  truly  fundamental  in  reality,  says  that  if  we  knew  every- 
thing and  could  feel  everything  we  should  see  and  feel  what  finite- 
ness, pain  and  evil  mean,  and  how  they  play  a  part  in  perfection 
itself.  The  way  of  meeting  them  —  though  it  is  not  our  business 
to  preach,  yet  we  may  permit  ourselves  to  illustrate  our  view  by  its 
effect  —  the  way  of  meeting  them  is  different  in  principle  for  these 
two  theories.  It  is  absurd  and  insulting  to  tell  a  man  in  pain  or  in 
sin  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  pain  or  sin;  it  is  neither  absurd 
nor  insulting  to  try  to  let  him  feel  that  of  each  of  them  something 
great  and  precious  can  be  made."  ^ 

It  is  inevitable  that  such  a  fundamental  belief  should  affect 
one's  attitude  in  matters  of  practical  reform.  We  are  not  to 
replace  an  evil  state  of  things  with  a  good  state  of  things,  we 
are  to  make  evil  good.  If  you  destroy  it,  it  remains  as  evil  as 
ever,  having  merely  become  a  non-existent  evil.  It  still 
remains  as  a  blot  upon  the  past.  Evil  is  not  to  be  removed, 
but  rather  to  remain  as  a  seasoning  in  the  dish  of  good. 
Thus  in  his  attitude  toward  men,  the  idealist  will  tend  on  the 
whole  not  to  think  of  their  suffering  and  wickedness  as  some- 
thing that  can  be  made  away  with,  but  rather  as  something 
that  has  its  good  side,  its  spiritual  significance.  One  will 
think  of  the  lot  of  the  working  classes,  for  example,  as 
redeemed  by  endurance,  self-denial,  kindliness,  cheerfulness 
and  fortitude,  '^  great  qualities  that  seem  only  to  be  guaran- 
teed by  hardship.''  Bosanquet  adds,  somewhat  apologeti- 
cally, that  *  irrational  hardship  clamors  to  be  abolished."  ^ 
But  such  abolition  is  no  solution  of  the  problem.  **Our 
main  point,"  he  continues,  ^'is  .  .  .  that  idealism  is  not  an 

^  Bosanquet:  The  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  240,  241. 
*  Social  and  International  Ideals,  p.  63,  52-53. 


ABSOLUTE  OPTIMISM 


249 


escape  from  reality;  but,  first,  a  faith  in  the  reality  beneath 
appearances,  which,  secondly,  works  by  'comprehension,' 
and  not  by  opposition,  and  confers,  thirdly,  a  power  of  trans- 
forming the  appearance  in  the  direction  of  the  real  reality."^ 

This  transforming  of  appearance,  it  is  to  be  noted,  is  not  a 
changing  of  its  real  nature,  but  a  bringing  out  of  its  real 
nature  —  what  Bosanquet  elsewhere  speaks  of  as  a  ''diving 
into  the  core  of  appearance  until  the  real  reality  discloses 
itself."  2  In  other  words  evil  is  to  be  thought  good,  rather 
than  made  good.  What  is  needed  is  not  destructive  zeal, 
house-cleaning,  the  scotching  of  evil  —  but  rather  a  deeper 
insight  in  which  the  round  and  perfect  whole  is  revealed. 

Associated  with  this  quietistic  motive  is  a  species  of  fatal- 
ism. The  philosophical  moralist  instead  of  trying  to  remake 
this  sorry  scheme  of  things,  instead  of  setting  up  an  ideal  and 
then  moving  reality  to  it,  is  to  get  his  clue  from  reality. 
He  is  to  get  the  sense  and  swing  of  things,  the  deeper  under- 
tones of  life,  and  put  himself  in  unison  with  them. 

*'The  social  process  is  greater  than  anyone's  formula;  and  what 
we  have  to  think  of  is  how  causation  is  working,  and  how  we  can 
throw  ourselves  into  it  in  union  with  the  real  forces  of  the  day.  .  .  . 
We  shall,  as  a  great  writer  has  said,  remember  'What  the  world  is, 
and  what  we  are.'  We  shall  try  to  understand  it,  and  co-operate 
with  it,  rather  than  to  remould  it.  We  shall  seek  for  what  is 
deepest  in  it,  knowing  we  shall  find  there  a  power  which  will 
respond  to  what  is  deepest  in  ourselves.  And  by  taking  these 
things  as  our  guide  and  criterion,  we  shall  always  be  working  in  a 
direction  which  will  at  once  be  practicable  and  good."  ^ 

Such  is  the  idealistic  faith  in  the  goodness  of  things,  a  faith 
as  it  appears  to  me  quite  incompatible  with  the  temper  of  a 
militant  moralism.  Idealism  accepts  the  maxim,  "Tout 
comprendre  c'est  tout  pardonner."  And  its  philosophical 
emphasis  inclines  it  to  the  view  that  it  is  better  to  be  leniently 
understanding,  than  to  be  blindly  zealous.  It  teaches  a  man 
to  identify  himself  with  the  universe,  rather  than  to  be  a  par- 

1  Ibid.,  p.  88. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  90. 

^  Ibid.,  pp.  244,  246. 


2  so 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


tisan  of  any  of  its  aspects,  such  as  even  justice  and  happiness 
must  be  deemed  to  be.^ 

As  for  an  Absolute  God  in  whom  all  evil  is  contained,  and 
by  whose  Will  or  Purpose  all  things  must  be  explained,  I  feel 
strongly  attracted  to  the  view  of  Francis  Bacon,  who  said: 

"It  were  better  to  have  no  opinion  of  God  at  all,  than  such  an 
opinion  as  is  unworthy  of  Him.  For  the  one  is  unbelief,  the  other 
is  contumely:  and  certainly  superstition  is  the  reproach  of  the 
Deity.  Plutarch  saith  well  to  that  purpose:  Surely  (saith  he)  / 
had  rather  a  great  deal  men  should  say  there  was  no  such  man  at  all 
as  Plutarch,  than  that  they  should  say  that  there  was  one  Plutarch 
that  would  eat  his  children  as  soon  a^  they  were  born;  as  the  poets 
speak  of  Saturn."  ^ 

1  For  a  similar  criticism  of  Bosanquet,  cf.  Hobson:  The  Crisis  of  Liberalism. 
*  Fowler's  Bacan,  p.  187. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  ABSOLUTIST  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  STATE 

The  problems  and  perplexities  of  the  present  age,  of 
which  the  great  war  is  the  tragic  expression,  and  of  which 
we  must  hope  that  the  great  war  will  in  some  degree  pro- 
vide a  solution,  fall  into  two  great  groups.  On  the  one  hand 
there  are  the  problems  of  international  conflict,  and  on  the 
other  hand  the  problems  of  inter-class  conflict.  Both 
groups  of  problems  involve,  as  perhaps  their  chief  question 
of  principle,  the  question  of  the  function  of  the  state.  The 
international  problems  turn  on  the  extent  to  which  a  state 
may  properly  submit  to  laws  and  policies  which  define  the 
interest  of  humanity  as  a  whole.  The  inter-class  problems 
turn  on  the  extent  to  which  a  state  may  properly  be  sub- 
ordinated to  the  interests  of  its  classes  or  members  taken 
severally.  It  is  evident  that  in  so  far  as  the  state  is  regarded 
as  a  finality  in  questions  of  moraUty  and  well-being,  it 
cannot  properly  submit  to  anything.  It  will  not,  strictly 
speaking,  recognize  obligations  at  all,  save  perhaps  to  God; 
and  since  God  is  not  commonly  at  hand  to  make  his  will 
unmistakably  known,  those  who  act  for  the  state  find  no 
difl&culty  in  interpreting  that  will  in  a  manner  agreeable  to 
their  own. 

If  each  state  regards  itself  as  a  finality,  and  if  there  are, 
as  is  unfortunately  the  case,  many  states,  then  conflict  is 
inevitable  and  irreconcilable.  And  each  state  will  regard 
its  corporate  greatness  as  a  consideration  superior  to  the 
happiness  of  the  mere  individuals  who  are  its  members. 
Neither  individuals  nor  alien  states  will  have  any  rights 
or  just  claims  against  it. 

In  the  present  chapter  I  propose  to  show  that  this  con- 
ception of  the  state  as  a  finality  follows  very  consistently 
from  that  absolutist  philosophy  which  we  have  just  been 

251 


/ 


252  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

Studying.  It  would  appear  not  to  be  an  accident  that 
Germany,  where  this  conception  of  the  state  is  most  widely 
entertained,  is  also  the  home  of  Kant,  Fichte  and  Hegel, 
and  the  land  in  which  their  philosophy  has  exercised  the 
greatest  influence  upon  historians,   pubUcists,   economists 

and  men  of  affairs.  ,  ..     i     ru      i 

A  recent  German-American  wnter  of  a  relatively  hberal 
persuasion,  Professor  Kuno  Francke,  has  written  as  follows 
concerning  the  German  conception  of  the  state: 

"To  the  German,  it  is  a  spiritual  collective  personaUty,  leading 
a  life  of  its  own,  beyond  and  above  the  life  of  individuals  and  its 
aim  is  not  the  protection  of  the  happiness  of  mdividuals,  but  their 
elevation  to  a  nobler  type  of  manhood  and  thdr  training  for  the 
achievement  of  great  common  tasks  in  all  the  higher  concerns  of 
life  -  in  popular  education,  in  miHtary  service,  m  communal  and 
industrial  education,  in  scientific  inquiry,  in  artisUc  culture.  This 
conception  ...  is  to-day  perhaps  the  most  powerful  incentive 
for  every  kind  of  activity  that  agitates  the  Fatherland. 

"This  conception  of  the  state  may  seem  mystic,  fantastic,  ex- 
travagant. .  .  .  It  may  be  something  of  an  intoxication,  a  chimera, 
a  frenzy  If  so,  it  is  a  stem  and  exalted  frenzy,  a  frenzy  which  is 
constantly  converting  itself  into  tireless  effort,  unending  devotion 
to  duty,  unbounded  readiness  for  self-sacrifice,  unceasmg  work  for 
self-improvement,  patient  self-discipline."  ^ 

I  cite  this  paragraph  partly  in  order  to  present  a  concrete 
instance  of  the  theory  I  propose  to  discuss;  but  also  because 
the  author  forcibly  reminds  us  that  those  who  carry  out 
this  theory  in  practice  take  what  is  to  them  the  highest 
moral  ground.  We  should  be  far  from  the  mark  if ^  we 
thought  that  the  Germans  were  any  less  morally  conscious 
than  other  people.  Probably  just  the  contrary  is  true. 
Probably  more  of  deliberate  conscientiousness  is  put  into 
conduct  in  Germany  than  anywhere  else.  If  there  is  any- 
thing wrong  with  Germany,  as  we  strongly  suspect  there  is, 
it  is  not  that  they  have  no  conscience,  but  rather  that 
their  conscience  is  mistaken.  This  is  a  much  more  serious 
and  dangerous  matter  than  mere  primitive  savagery  or 
childish  lawlessness. 

1  A  German- American's  Confession  of  Faith,  pp.  26-27. 


CONCEPTION  OF  THE  STATE 


253 


To  understand  this  seeming  paradox,  it  is  only  necessary 
to  bear  in  mind  that  what  is  virtue  in  a  Umited  view  of  life, 
may  be  vice  in  a  more  adequate  view.  Furthermore  the 
very  degree  of  its  limited  virtuousness  may  determine  the 
degree  of  its  ultimate  viciousness.  This  is  the  ethics  of 
fanaticism.  Those  who  promoted  the  Inquisition,  for  ex- 
ample, were  highly  virtuous.  I  do  not  mean  this  in  any 
ironical  sense.  They  were  the  most  severely  and  rigorously 
moral  men  of  their  age.  They  were  the  men  of  character 
and  of  principle,  par  excellence.  They  were  prudent,  in- 
dustrious, loyal,  disinterested,  enthusiastic.  But  unfortu- 
nately they  lost  sight  of  certain  considerations.  They  did 
not  take  a  wide  enough  view  of  the  matter;  and  such 
being  the  case  they  were  far  more  terribly  destructive  to 
those  interests  which  they  ignored  than  they  would  have 
been  had  they  been  less  intensely  in  earnest.  Or  consider 
a  man's  loyalty  to  his  wife.  At  first  it  may  appear  im- 
possible that  a  man  should  be  too  loyal  to  his  wife.  But 
suppose  that  his  devotion  carries  him,  for  example,  to  the 
point  of  elbowing  other  women  and  trampling  on  children, 
in  order  to  make  his  wife  perfectly  comfortable.  When  it 
gets  to  this  we  say  that  he  is  excessively  uxorious;  and  we 
discover  that  he  is  a  social  menace  from  the  very  degree  of 
his  conjugal  fidelity.  The  Spanish  Inquisition  and  the 
zealous  husband  both  mean  well.  But  this  does  not  prevent 
their  being  dangerous.  On  the  contrary  it  makes  them 
more  dangerous  because  it  makes  them  more  enthusiastic 
and  more  persistent.  This  is  my  feeling  about  the  Ger- 
mans. They  mean  well;  like  all  fanatics  they  are  terrify- 
ingly  earnest.  The  problem  of  diagnosis  is  to  find  that 
wrong  thing  which  they  mean  well;  that  narrow,  perverted, 
or  bigoted  morality  which  so  heartens  and  unites  them  that 
all  the  rest  of  the  world  is  compelled  in  self-defense  to  re- 
gard them  as  the  common  enemy.  I  do  not  want  to  claim 
too  much  for  any  single  formula,  but  I  am  convinced  that 
present  German  policy  has  justified  itself  to  many  of  the 
most  sober  and  well-meaning  Germans  through  this  false 
conception  of  the  state  as  a  finality,  as  "a  spiritual  collective 


254  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

personality  "  in  whose  greatness  and  glory  the  individual 
should  find  his  highest  end. 

I.    THE  NATURE   OF  THE  STATE 

The  idea  of  the  state  which  we  have  here  to  consider 
must  be  distinguished  from  two  older  and  more  familiar 
ideas  with  which  it  has  much  in  common.  It  is  m  the 
first  place  not  the  same  thing  as  poUtical  absolutism,  the 
idea  that  the  ruling  class  or  dynasty  possesses  absolute  au- 
thority by  right  of  birth  or  by  "divine  right."  This  older 
and  more  famiUar  idea  is  simply  a  theory  of  sovereignty, 
to  the  effect  that  it  is  vested  irrevocably  m  certain  pnvi- 
leged  persons.  The  new  idea  of  a  state-personality  does, 
as  we  shall  see,  provide  a  new  argument  for  pohtical  abso- 
lutism, but  it  is  in  this  new  argument,  rather  than  in  the 
inference  from  it,  that  its  distinguishing  charactenstics 
appear.  This  new  argument  is  to  the  effect  that  the  state 
is  an  indivisible  spiritual  entity  whose  will  or  purpose  is 
infallibly  expressed  by  its  de  facto  rulers. 

Another  older  and  more  familiar  idea  is  the  idea  that  man 
cannot  acknowledge  more  than  one  sovereign  authority 
and  that  therefore  all  men  must  submit  to  one  universal 
dominion.  This  idea  found  expression  in  ancient  times  m 
the  world-wide  rule  of  Rome,  and,  in  the  mediaeval  period, 
in  the  rival  claims  of  the  Papacy  and  the  Holy  Roman  Em- 
pire Here  again  the  new  idea  has  something  in  common 
with  the  old.  It  is  contended  that  the  state  of  which  any 
individual  is  a  member  may  properly  overrule  every  other 
claim  of  allegiance.  But  since  the  state  is  here  interpreted 
in  the  Ught  of  the  idea  of  nationaUty,  it  is  supposed  to  have 
a  pecuUar  individuality  of  its  own,  which  gives  it  a  umque 
value,  but  which  at  the  same  time  distinguishes  it  from 
diverse  individuaUties  of  the  same  type.  If  a  state  so  in- 
terpreted is  to  claim  universal  dominion,  it  must  be  on  the 
ground  that  its  own  pecuUar  culture  is  at  the  time  the 
richest  and  completest  expression  of  the  world-spirit. 

Thus  in  comparing  the  new  conception  of  the  state  with 
other  kindred  views,  it  is  distinguished  by  its  emphasis 


CONCEPTION  OF  THE  STATE 


255 


upon  the  spiritual  solidarity  of  the  state,  as  giving  it  su- 
preme value.  The  state  in  this  view  is  the  most  complete, 
the  most  perfect,  and  hence  the  most  authoritative  thing 
by  which  human  conduct  may  be  regulated. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  contend  that  the  notion  of  state- 
personality  was  originated  by  Kantian  idealism.  This  phil- 
osophy has  served  only  to  give  articulate  expression  and 
greater  plausibility  to  an  idea  that  has  a  much  simpler 
psychological  explanation.  In  the  Nineteenth  Century,  as 
is  well-known,  there  was  a  great  awakening  of  national 
self-consciousness.  Cavour  and  Bismarck  sought  to  realize 
this  sentiment,  to  give  to  nationality  the  effectual  unity  and 
autonomy  of  statehood.  But  the  sentiment  itself  is  suffi- 
cient to  account  for  the  idea  of  the  individuated  state. 
Whatever  we  loyally  love  and  serve  we  tend  to  personify. 
This  can  probably  be  explained  in  the  last  analysis  by  what 
is  called  **the  pathetic  fallacy,'*  that  is,  the  disposition  of 
the  human  mind  to  attribute  to  any  source  of  good  or  evil, 
a  corresponding  will  or  purpose.  Gratitude  and  resentment 
usually  impute  motives  to  their  objects  —  conceiving  their 
objects  as  benevolent  or  maUcious.  Gratitude  to  nature 
for  benefits  received  readily  takes  the  form  of  representing 
Nature  as  a  kindly  and  gracious  being,  a  person  animated 
by  good-will.  Similarly  patriotism  personifies  its  object. 
A  social  group  which  one  has  learned  to  associate  with  what 
one  loves,  and  which  one  has  thus  come  in  a  way  to  love  for 
itself,  is  regarded  and  referred  to  as  though  it  had  a  will  of 
its  own. 

A  further  motive  for  the  same  personifying  tendency  is  to 
be  found  in  the  economy  of  thought.  History  is  greatly 
simplified  if  instead  of  speaking  of  men  in  the  plural  we  can 
speak  af  groups  in  the  singular.  It  is  convenient  to  be  able 
to  treat  a  unit  of  discourse  as  though  it  were  a  unit  of  reality; 
or  to  speak  of  a  group  that  participates  as  a  whole  in  any 
particular  event  which  we  may  happen  to  be  describing,  as 
though  it  were  a  whole  in  all  respects.  What  is  thus  at  first 
a  convenient  abbreviation,  may  become  a  fixed  habit,  and 
obtain  acceptance  as  a  true  and  adequate  idea.    It  is  also 


256 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


natural  to  dramatize  history,  to  attach  a  role  or  assign  a  part 
to  a  social  group,  and  so  to  invest  the  group  with  a  sort  of 
individual  identity.  Such  relatively  simple  psychological 
explanations  underlie  the  common  practice  of  speaking  of 
John  Bull  and  Uncle  Sam,  of  Britannia  and  Columbia;  the 
practice  of  saying  that  England  did  this  and  America  that, 
as  though  referring  to  individuated  characters  appearing 
upon  the  stage  of  history,  and  having  each  a  purpose,  will. 

or  passion  of  its  own. 

But  absolute  ideaUsm  offers  a  theoretical  justification  for 
the  literal  acceptance  of  what  might  otherwise  be  regarded 
as  a  trick  of  speech  or  a  careless  metaphor.  This  justification 
appeals  fundamentally  to  the  principle  of  organic  unity. 

I.  Organic  Unity.  No  part  of  anything,  according  to 
this  view,  is  in  itself  either  real  or  good.  To  find  what  it 
really  is,  or  to  find  its  true  value,  you  must  proceed  to  the 
whole  of  it,  and  then  from  that  vantage-point,  see  the  part 
where  it  belongs.  The  human  individual  is  thus  neither  real 
nor  good  in  himself,  because  he  is  a  part  of  something.  The 
whole  to  which  he  primarily  belongs,  and  in  the  light  of 
which  he  must  be  understood  and  evaluated,  is  the  state. 
Let  us  trace  the  argument  as  it  is  presented  by  Professor 

Bosanquet.^ 

This  writer  starts  with  the  notion  that  the  human  indi- 
vidual is  not  complete  in  himself.  *'The  moment  we  enter 
upon  the  reflective  study  of  man,  we  learn  that  his  indi- 
viduality, his  self-identity,  lie  outside  him  as  he  presents 
himself  in  time.  His  nature,  according  to  Green's  phrase, 
which  goes  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  is  in  process  of  being 
communicated  to  him.''  ^  The  individual  finds  his  reaUty 
beyond  his  private  self  in  a  larger  ^^  complex  of  lives  and 
activities."  As  private  persons  are  related  to  their  several 
states  of  consciousness,  as  integrating  and  possessing  them, 

1  In  addition  to  the  references  below  the  reader  may  consult  the  same 
author's  Philosophy  of  the  StaU,  and  a  symposium  on  the  state  in  the  Proceed- 
ings of  the  Aristotelian  Society  for  19 16,  summarized  in  the  Journal  of  Philos- 
ophy, VoL  XIV,  p.  83.  ^^  ^^    ^^    ^.  ,   . . 

2  The  Principle  of  Individuality  and  Value,  p.  259.  Cf.  Nettleship  s  biog- 
raphy of  Green,  pp.  27,  114,  136. 


CONCEPTION  OF  THE   STATE 


257 


SO  persons,  in  turn,  ''by  forming  an  integral  part  of  greater 
wholes,  acquire  a  value  completely  other  than  that  which 
they  would  prima  facie  possess."  The  perfection  of  the 
individual, 

"you  could  only  obtain  by  first  judging  the  perfection  of  a  society 
as  a  unitary  body  of  experience  —  because  it  is  in  this  alone  that 
the  individual  conscious  being  is  all  he  can  be  —  and  then  adjusting 
to  this  your  estimate  of  individual  perfection. 

"When  you  have  admitted  the  unity  of  the  person  with  him- 
self, it  is  impossible  to  stop  short  of  his  unity  with  others, 
with  the  world,  and  with  the  universe;  and  the  perfection  by 
which  he  is  to  be  valued  is  his  place  in  the  perfection  of  these 
greater  wholes."  ^ 

In  an  essay  written  since  the  opening  of  the  war.  Professor 
Bosanquet  defends,  on  the  premises  just  formulated,  the 
Hegelian  view  of  the  nation-state  as  the  supreme  instance 
of  these  ''greater  wholes,"  saving  only  the  ideal  perfection 
of  the  Absolute.  Man's  relatedness  to  his  fellows,  and  his 
dependence  on  the  power  of  the  state  for  security  and  order, 
are  interpreted  as  implying  that  his  existence  and  signifi- 
cance are  both  drawn  from  this  complete  social  being.  The 
peculiar  culture,  tradition  and  institutional  forms  of  the 
state  possess  a  substantial  value,  mean  something  that  is 
permanent  and  universal;  and  only  through  identifying 
himself  with  this  can  the  individual  save  himself  from 
annihilation  and  ignominy. 

"The  individual  is  supposed  to  see  in  it  the  form  of  life,  and 
more  than  that,  the  particular  form  of  sentiment  and  volition, 
which  his  nation  has  so  far  worked  out  for  itself,  and  in  which 
he,  the  private  person,  finds  the  substance  of  his  own  mind,  and 
what  unites  him  with  others.  It  includes,  of  course,  the  ethical 
tradition  of  the  society,  with  the  observances  and  institutions  in 
which  it  is  embodied  and  preserved;  and  more  especially  it  is 
identified  with  the  general  will  as  expressed  in  the  laws  and  the 
political  constitution.  The  state,  in  short,  is  the  ark  in  which  the 
whole  treasure  of  the  individual's  head  and  heart  is  preserved  and 
guarded  within  a  world  which  may  be  disorderly  and  hostile.  .  .  . 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  312,  313,  315. 


258 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Without  the  state  we  are  nothing  and  nobody.  It  is  for  us  the 
Se  of  the  value  of  the  world.  It  stands  for  our  contnbut  on 
lolLtgetrd  sum  of  what  humanity  has  achieved  and  what  makes 
any  Ufe  worth  Uving."  ^ 

2.  The  State  and  the  Nation.     It  is  a  very  important 
feature  of  this  view  that  the  nation  should  be  identified 
with  the  state.     It  is  not  merely  that  the  nation  has  a  kind 
of  individuaUty  of  its  own,  a  characteristic  physiognomy, 
and  a  more  or  less  distinctive  purpose  and  destiny.     It  is 
not  merely  that  the  members  of  a  nation  are  aware  of  a 
certain  community  of  ideas  and  sentiments,  and  that  through 
their  conscious  adherence  to  these  they  umte  ma  collective 
will     It  is  further  contended  that  this  collective  will  ex- 
presses itself  in  the  acts  of  state,  in  the  official  policy  of  the 
political  authorities.     This  is  not  the  same  as  the  truism 
that  the  state  ought  to  express  the  collective  will,  in  so  far 
as  there  is  one.     That  would  be  equivalent  to  admitting 
that  the  collective  will  has  other  ways  of  makmg  itself 
known,  which  may  operate  as  a  check  upon  the  state;  and 
such  an  admission  would  at  once  raise  questions  as  to  where 
such  a  superior  collective  will  is  to  be  found.     It  would 
threaten  to  become  a  very  fluctuating  and  ambiguous  thing, 
like  ^'pubUc  opinion.'^     No,  the  view  which  we  are  consid- 
ering finds  itself  almost  inevitably  impelled  to  tdentify  the 
collective  will  with  the  decisions  and  acts  of  government. 
The  ruling  authorities  are  its  exponents    ex  officio.     Ihe 
reasons  for  the  acceptance  of  this  view  are  plam.     On  the 
theory  that  there  is  a  state-personality,  with  a  will  ot  its 
own,  it  is  necessary  that  some  organ  should  be  identified 
which  may  be  said  to  speak  for  it  authoritatively.     What 
an  individual  wills  can  be  found  out  by  askmg  him  and  he 
may   be   judged   and   held   responsible   accordmgly.     But 
what  does  -America ''  will?    It  cannot  be  what  you  or  I 
will   for  our  wills  differ.     It  cannot  be  what  is  resolved  in 
a  mass-meeting  of  citizens,  for  this  may  be  contradicted  by 
the    counter-resolutions    of    another    mass-meeting.     Indi- 

1  "Patriotism  in  the  Perfect  State,"  The  International  Crisis,  pp.  i33-i3S. 


CONCEPTION  OF  THE   STATE 


259 


viduals  evidently  do  not  will  in  unison,  and  yet  they  are  all 
Americans.  What  is  that  American  will  that  represents 
them  all,  whether  they  know  it  or  agree  with  it  or  not? 
There  would  seem  to  be  no  other  alternative  but  to  accept 
as  the  American  will,  the  official  acts  and  utterances  of  the 
President,  of  Congress,  and  of  the  Supreme  Court. 

The  fact  that  an  individual  happened  not  to  assent  would, 
then,  in  this  view  not  give  that  individual  any  right  to  pro- 
test. His  will  is  overruled  because  it  is  merely  individual, 
and  as  such  must  yield  to  the  will  of  the  higher  corporate 
being  of  which  he  is  a  part.  Official  acts  of  the  state  are 
not  to  be  judged  by  their  agreement  with  the  sentiments  or 
opinions  of  its  individual  members.  It  was  never  intended 
to  express  these,  and  it  is  no  reproach  to  it  that  it  does  not. 
It  is  intended  to  express  the  will  of  a  superior  spiritual 
being,  to  which  the  individual  belongs,  whether  consciously 
or  not,  just  as  a  cell  belongs  to  a  larger  animal  organism. 
It  must  be  assumed  that  it  does  express  this  higher  will, 
because  there  is  no  other  way  of  knowing  what  this  higher 
will  is.  In  short  this  theory  is  in  principle  precisely  like  the 
theory  of  papal  infallibility.  The  policy  of  the  authorita- 
tive state,  like  that  of  the  authoritative  church,  is  self- 
validating. 

It  is  evident  that  this  is  the  precise  opposite  of  what  we 
call  popular  government;  and  if  it  were  true  it  would  en- 
tirely justify  the  right  of  monarchs  to  speak  in  the  name  of 
God,  and  to  regard  parliaments  as  debating  societies  for 
the  expression  of  opinions  which  the  rulers  may  accept 
or  disregard  according  to  their  own  superior  judgment. 
But  as  a  matter  of  fact  no  state  on  earth  has  actually  pro- 
ceeded on  this  theory.  No  government  can  afford  to  neg- 
lect the  interests  of  the  governed.  Every  government  has 
secured  its  power,  whether  just  or  not,  from  the  consent  of 
the  governed.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  has  enjoyed  the 
approbation  of  all  of  the  governed;  no  government  has 
ever  secured  unanimity  of  support.  But  political  author- 
ity has  been  based  invariably  upon  the  fact  that  the  majority 
of  the  governed  who  have  had  minds  of  their  own  and  the 


26o 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


power  to  make  their  opinions  tell,  have  deemed  it  expedient 
to  assent  to  that  authority.^ 

In  other  words,  in  point  of  fact  the  state  like  any  other 
social  agency  has  got  to  prove  acceptable.  It  has  got  to 
secure  the  suffrage  of  those  whose  affairs  it  regulates,  very 
much  as  any  private  institution  or  association  must  do.  It 
is  true  that  the  state  represents  the  interests  of  the  group 
in  a  more  comprehensive  and  far-reaching  way  than  do 
other  institutions,  though  even  this  might  be  challenged  in 
behalf  of  the  international  SociaUst  Party  or  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church.  It  is  true,  also,  that  the  state  exercises  a 
coercive  power  that  is  not  claimed  by  private  institutions. 
But  it  uses  force  in  so  far  as  permitted  to  do  so  by  those 
who  create  the  force.  Its  power,  even  that  overruling  power 
which  it  employs  in  its  police  and  miUtary  functions,  is 
derived  from  its  support. 

If  this  be  the  case,  it  may  be  asked,  how  can  any  harm 
come  to  society  from  the  idealistic  theory  of  the  state? 
How  can  it  be  harmful  that  men  should  believe  in  the  in- 
fallibility of  the  state,  if  in  fact  the  state  possesses  no  sover- 
eignty save  such  as  men  delegate  to  it?  The  harm  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  state  may  enjoy  support  on  false  pre- 
tences. In  so  far  as  men  believe  that  the  state  has  a  higher 
concern  than  their  own  several  interests,  their  obedience 
becomes  a  sort  of  idolatry.  BeUeving  that  the  state  repre- 
sents some  mysterious  corporate  Ufe,  in  which  their  deeper 
selves  are  somehow,  they  know  not  how,  preserved  and 
fulfilled,  they  become  bUnd  to  their  actual  interests.  They 
permit  the  officials  of  the  state,  acting  in  the  name  of  an 
utterly  fictitious  sanction,  to  enrich  and  exalt  themselves, 
and  to  exact  sacrifices  that  would  not  otherwise  be  conceded 
for  an  instant.  The  victims  of  political  superstition  are 
like  the  victims  of  any  superstition.  They  give  their  consent, 
it  is  true;  but  their  ignorance  and  creduHty  are  exploited. 
They  willingly  surrender  what  they  would  not  surrender  if 
they  knew  better. 

1  Cf.  H.  J.  Laski:  Studies  in  the  Problem  of  Sovereignty,  Chap.  I.  This  writer 
says:  "Where  sovereignty  prevails,  where  the  State  acts,  it  acts  by  the  consent 
of  men."    (P.  13-) 


CONCEPTION  OF  THE   STATE 


261 


II.    THE  FINALITY  OF  THE   STATE 

^  The  state,  according  to  the  view  which  we  are  here  discus- 
sing, is  the  supreme  good,  saving  only  that  Absolute  Good, 
which  must  be  inferred,  and  which  must  be  judged  by  the 
state  as  its  most  adequate  embodiment.  For  practical  pur- 
poses the  state  is  a  finality. 

I.  Its  Internal  Finality.  In  the  first  place  the  state  is 
the  supreme  good  for  its  own  members.  It  is  the  state  as  a 
whole  which  is  good,  rather  than  any  individual.  This  con- 
ception of  organic  value  appears  to  be  innocuous  enough  in 
Kant's  phrasing:  ^'Each  part  is  both  a  means  and  an  end 
to  the  whole  and  to  every  other  part.''  But  if  the  whole 
is  an  end  for  the  part,  it  makes  a  great  difference  how  this 
whole  is  construed.  In  the  Hegelian  view  this  whole  is  an 
indivisible  unity  having  its  own  peculiar  goodness  as  a  whole. 
Then  to  say  that  the  whole  is  also  a  means  to  the  part  sig- 
nifies only  that  the  true  good  of  the  parts  is  to  be  found  not 
in  their  several  interests,  but  in  their  incorporation  into  the 
whole.     Thus  Hegel  says: 

"The  State  is  the  rational  in  itself  and  for  itself.  Its  substantial 
unity  is  an  absolute  end  in  itself.  To  it  belongs  supreme  right  in 
respect  to  individuals  whose  first  duty  is  —  just  to  be  members  of 
the^  State.''  .  .  .  (The  State)  "is  the  absolute  reahty  and  the 
individual  himself  has  objective  existence,  truth  and  morality  only 
in  his  capacity  as  a  member  of  the  State.''  ^ 

This  appears  also  to  be  Bosanquet's  conception.  He 
adopts  Plato's  view  that  human  value  lies  in  the  beauty 
of  the  whole,  and  that  such  beauty  implies  that  value  in 
individuals  shall  be  unequally  distributed. 

"If  you  complain  of  this,  he  (Plato)  says  in  a  very  famous 
passage,  it  is  like  complaining  that  in  coloring  a  statue  you  paint 
the  eyes,  which  are  the  most  beautiful  feature,  not  with  purple, 
which  is  the  most  beautiful  color,  but  with  black.  For  you  must 
not  make  them  so  beautiful  that  they  are  not  like  eyes  at  all.  And  so 
it  is  the  whole  system  that  dictates  his  functions  to  every  individual: 

1  Quoted  from  Philosophy  of  Law,  by  Dewey,  German  Philosophy  and  Politics^ 
p.  no. 


262 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


and  the  law  of  justice  is  that  he  should  be  what  his  special  duty 
demands,  however  hard  or  humble  may  be  the  place  so  assigned 

^'What  we  commonly  mean  by  justice  ...  is  destmed  m  the 
end  to  be  transformed  with  the  best  of  all  possible  reasons.  This 
best  of  all  possible  reasons,  if  I  am  challenged  to  state  it  plainly  is 
that  in  the  end  the  individual's  true  nature  Ues  beyond  his  visible 
self  — e.g.,  in  religion  the  individual,  as  such,  is  absorbed.  A 
'claim'  becomes  blasphemy." ^ 

This  is  evidently   flatly   opposed    to    ^'what    everyone 
wants,"  namely,  ''to  satisfy  the  demands  of  justice  by  mak- 
ing possible  an  impartial  development  of  human  capacity  "; 
unless,  indeed,  we  are  to  suppose  that  there  is  a  sort  of 
pre-established  harmony  by  which  each  man's  capacity  cor- 
responds to  just  what  society  requires  of  him.     This  is  sug- 
gested in  the  passage:  "It  is  not  merit  but  capacity  for  this 
or  that  function  which  determines  on  the  whole  the  ap- 
paratus with  which  a  man  is  equipped  by  the  community. 
...  the  tools  go,  on  the  whole,  to  him  who  can  use  them."  ^ 
in  any  case  Bosanquet  admits  that  prestige  must  belong^  to 
the  ruling  and  professional   classes,  while  the  productive 
classes  must  be  satisfied  to  enjoy  mere  wealth;    which  is 
sharply  opposed  to  the  ideal  of  social  democracy,  according 
to  which  men  should  be  made  equal  in  dignity,  and  in  the 
benefits  which  they  individually  derive  from  social  organ- 
ization.    No  one  would  deny  that  the  necessary  activities 
of  society,  such  as  labor  and  industrial  production,  should 
be  distributed  so  far  as  possible  according  to  aptitude  and 
competence.     But  it  is  inconsistent  v^ith  democracy  that 
men  should  be  permanently  and  arbitrarily  condemned  to 
ignoble  or  repugnant  tasks,  in  order  to  contribute  to  the 
rounded  perfection  of  the  whole.     If  it  should  prove  neces- 
sary in  a  more  developed  society  that  some  men  should 
perform  baser  and  more  distasteful  tasks,  then  there  is  no 
solution  of  the  problem  save  to  assign  such  tasks  by  lot  or 
rotation,  as  is  done  in  voluntary  organizations  in  which  all 
members  are  accorded  equal  rank. 

1  Social  and  International  Ideals,  pp.  209,  210.    Cf.  also  IndividualUy  and 
Value,  p.  313. 

2  Ibid. J  p.  236. 


CONCEPTION  OF  THE  STATE 


263 


The  idea  that  the  good  of  society  appears  in  the  whole 
rather  than  in  the  parts  taken  severally,  is  largely  respon- 
sible for  the  fallacy  of  national  ''greatness."  It  provides  a 
justification  for  national  wealth  based  on  slavery,  national 
glory  based  on  militarism,  or  national  brilliancy  in  art  and 
letters  based  on  the  ignorance  and  prostration  of  the  masses 
of  the  people.  The  incentive  to  reform  lies  in  the  protest 
of  neglected  individuals.  This  incentive  is  weakened  the 
moment  it  is  argued  that  the  misery  of  individuals  may  be 
compensated  by  the  high  role  played  by  the  nation  as  a  whole 
in  history  or  in  civilization. 

2.  Its  External  Finality.  If  the  state  be  the  supreme 
end  which  dictates  the  conduct  of  its  members,  then  it  is 
evident  that  there  is  no  moral  obligation  to  yield  to  the 
interest  of  an  alien  state.  Patriotism  becomes  the  highest 
motive  of  citizenship.  And  those  who  act  for  the  state 
will  be  untrue  to  their  trust  unless  they  press  its  claim  to 
the  uttermost  of  their  abilities.  This  accounts  for  the  fact 
that  those  who  accept  this  theory  of  the  state  usually  find 
war  inevitable,  if  not,  indeed,  desirable.  We  shall  consider 
this  aspect  of  the  matter  in  the  next  chapter.  Suffice  it 
here  to  cite  a  single  authority.  Gustav  Riimelin,  formerly 
Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Tubingen,  wrote  in  1875: 

"The  State  is  self-sufficient.  Self-regard  is  its  appointed  duty; 
the  maintenance  and  development  of  its  own  power  and  well-being 
—  egoism,  if  you  like  to  call  this  egoism  —  is  the  supreme  principle 
of  politics."  "  The  State  can  only  have  regard  to  the  interest  of  any 
other  State  so  far  as  this  can  be  identified  with  its  own  interest."  ^ 

3.  National  Self-realization.  This  higher  egoism  is  a  con- 
sistent application  of  the  principle  of  self-realization,  whose 
danger  we  have  already  noted.  If  an  individual  is  to  act 
in  the  interest  of  his  deeper  self,  then  so  much  the  more 
may  that  greater  and  more  authoritative  person,  the  state. 
Philosophers  who  are  in  principle  committed  to  this  stand- 
ard of  self-realization  have  sought  to  avoid  the  consequence 

1  Quoted  by  E.  Sidgwick,  The  International  Crisis,  p.  15.  The  aim  of  such 
theory,  says  Henry  Sidgwick,  is  "to  emancipate  the  public  action  of  statesmen 
from  the  restraints  of  private  morality."     {Practical  Ethics,  pp.  64,  65.) 


264 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


of  national  egoism,  by  stipulating  in  advance  that  the  best 
self  of  the  state  requires  a  regard  for  the  moral  character  of 
its  members,  and  for  the  rights  of  alien  states.  Thus  Mr. 
A.  C.  Bradley,  collaborating  with  others  of  the  idealistic 
school  in  a  volume  entitled  The  International  Crisis,  tells 
us  that 

"an  action  of  the  state  .  .  .  which  increases  its  wealth  or 
power  to  the  detriment  of  the  character  of  its  citizens  cannot  be  in 
its  interest,  but  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  violation  of  its  duty  to  itself. 
And  so  is  any  breach  of  promise  to  another  state,  any  intentional 
injury  to  another,  or  any  war  upon  another,  which  is  inconsistent 
with  that  best  life  of  its  own  citizens  which  is  their  one  and  only 
absolute  interest."  ^ 

But  why  is  it  a  violation  of  a  state's  duty  to  itself  to  in- 
jure the  character  of  its  citizens?  How  can  any  person 
know  what  its  self  requires,  save  that  person  itself,  in  this 
case  the  state?  And  why  should  the  moral  character  or 
''best  life  ''  of  a  citizen  require  him  to  be  humane  and  just 
to  foreigners,  if  his  inner  self  doesn't  tell  him  so?  The  fact 
is  that  this  writer  like  many  of  his  school  is  better  than  his 
philosophical  professions.  Instead  of  accepting  the  inner 
sanction  of  self  as  final,  he  first  defines  a  good  self  in  terms 
of  the  happiness  and  interests  of  mankind,  and  in  terms  of 
the  precepts  of  traditional  moraUty,  and  then  says  that 
right  conduct  consists  in  reaHzing  the  good  self.  This  cir- 
cular process  saves  such  writers  as  Mr.  Bradley  from  the 
necessity  of  personally  approving  the  poHcy  of  their  ene- 
mies, but  it  does  not  save  the  philosophy  which  they  profess 
from  justifying  such  a  policy  in  principle. 

If  a  state  is  a  person,  if  it  is  the  highest  of  human  historical 
persons,  then  in  the  theory  of  self-realization  it  need  not 
regard  anything  but  its  own  state  self-consciousness.  It 
must  suppose  that  the  absolute  spirit  is  best  served  by  the 
freest  and  fullest  expression  of  such  promptings  as  come 
from  within  the  souls  of  such  as  are  most  state-minded. 
Such  a  theory  is  a  threat  against  every  interest  that  lies 
outside  the  circle  of  such  a  self -consciousness.     It  acknowl- 

^  P.  55. 


CONCEPTION  OF  THE  STATE 


265 


edges  no  obligation  to  take  account  of  them.  They  are 
granted  no  title  to  limit  or  control  it.  Against  a  state- 
personality  so  impregnable  to  appeal  from  without,  so  pre- 
occupied with  the  surging  of  the  great  ego,  there  is  only  one 
possible  course  for  them  to  pursue.  They  must  take  the 
necessary  measures  for  their  common  safety. 

4.  The  Responsibility  of  the  State.     It  has  been  argued 
m  favor  of  this  absolute  theory  of  the  state  that  it  provides 
the  only  possible  ground  for  state  responsibility.     If  the 
state  is  a  mere  aggregate  it  is  not  a  moral  being  at  all;  if  it 
be  a  person  then  like  individuals  it  may  be  held  and  judged 
for  its  deeds.     But  let  us  consider  the  analogy  of  lesser 
corporations  and  associations.    Through  being  recognized 
as  a  legal  entity  a  corporation  may,  it  is  true,  be  made  the 
defendant  in  a  damage  suit,  or  be  fined.     Similarly,  by 
being  regarded  as  a  belligerent  a  nation  may  be  penalized 
by  indemnities  or  annexations.     But  there  the  matter  ends, 
in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.     Suppose  an  offense  for 
which  a  mere  property  penalty  is  insufficient.    It  now  be- 
comes apparent  that  incorporation  means  irresponsibility. 
You  cannot  inflict  imprisonment  or  capital  punishment  upon 
a  corporation.     In  order  to  discourage  or  repress  corporate 
offences  it  becomes  necessary  to  hold  the  officials  of  the  cor- 
poration individually  responsible.     What  is  true  of  punish- 
ment is  even  more  strikingly  true  of  moral  disapprobation. 
We  speak  of  the  soullessness  of  a  corporation,  meaning  that 
the  corporation  as  such  is  not  sensitive  to  blame.     In  order 
to  exercise  this  powerful  deterrent  it  is  again  necessary  to 
single  out  individuals  and  to  hold  them  responsible  in  their 
own  persons  even  for  what  they  do  in  behalf  of  and  in  the 
name  of  the  larger  corporate  entity.     Apply  this  to  the  case 
of  the  state,  and  the  moral  is  clear.     You  cannot  convict  a 
whole  people,  since  it  will  always  be  the  case  that  many 
individuals  are  innocent.     On  the  other  hand  a  state  as  a 
corporate  entity  is  not  sensitive  or  responsive  to  disappro- 
bation.    If  the  officials  of  the  state  are  permitted  to  impute 
their  action  to  the  greater  state-personality,  they  may  go 
unscathed.     They  may  in  the  name  of  the  state  perform 


266 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


deeds  for  which  as  individuals  they  would  not  dare  to  be 
judged.  The  state  thus  becomes  a  convenient  scape-goat 
by  which  individual  miscreants  may  obtain  immunity.  The 
present  habit  in  allied  countries  of  singling  out  the  German 
Emperor  as  the  object  of  disapproval,  while  it  undoubtedly 
exaggerates  his  personal  role  in  German  policy,  is  a  signifi- 
cant proof  of  the  fact  that  the  only  kind  of  culprit  that  can 
be  summoned  before  the  bar  of  public  opinion  is  an  indi- 
vidual culprit,  who  is  fear  ul  of  reproach  and  capable  of 

shame. 

We  have  here  only  a  new  application  of  the  old  truism 
that  moral  development  has  been  marked  by  the  fixing  of 
responsibiUty  upon  individuals.  No  one  would  now  think 
of  holding  a  man's  family  responsible  for  his  crimes,  or  of 
holding  a  whole  community  responsible  for  the  sacrilege  or 
impiety  of  one  of  its  members.  It  is  no  less  obsolete  and 
reactionary  to  profess  that  the  state,  rather  than  the  known 
human  agents  directly  involved,  should  be  held  responsible 
for  offenses  against  the  peace  of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
WAR  AND   PROGRESS  ACCORDING  TO   ABSOLUTISM 


I.    INTERNATIONALITY   AND   PEACE 

I.  The  Great  Community.  The  drift  of  absolute  ideal- 
ism as  we  have  thus  far  interpreted  it  is  unmistakably 
toward  a  condoning  of  war.  This  may  seem  at  first  glance 
to  be  contrary  to  the  emphasis  which  this  philosophy  lays 
upon  wholeness  and  universality.  It  might  be  thought  that 
in  such  a  philosophy  harmony  and  interdependence  would 
invariably  be  preferred  to  discord  and  self-assertion;  and 
that  a  peaceful  federation  of  the  world  or  society  of  all  man- 
kind would  represent  the  nearest  human  approach  to  the 
Absolute.  Such  a  philosophy  of  internationalism  is  offered 
by  some  absolutists,  and  most  notably  by  the  late  Professor 
Royce,  in  his  Hope  of  the  Great  Community.  Let  us  consider 
this  teaching  before  turning  to  the  orthodox  Hegelianism 
of  Bosanquet. 

The  most  powerful  moral  sentiment  which  Professor 
Royce  personally  felt  was  the  sentiment  of  humanity. 
That  which  most  shocked  him  in  the  war  was  its  pitiless- 
ness;  and  that  which  stirred  his  deepest  resentment  toward 
those  whom  he  regarded  as  most  guilty  was  their  murderous 
cruelty.  Never  was  there  a  more  tender  and  kindly  man, 
or  one  who  longed  more  ardently  to  be  surrounded  by  a 
world  of  affection  and  sympathy.  A  second  motive,  scarcely 
less  strong,  was  his  admiration  for  Belgium  as  the  embodi- 
ment of  heroic  loyalty  to  a  lost  cause.  He  condemned 
Germany  as  not  only  cruel,  but  as  harshly  indifferent  to 
the  inward  pride  and  aspiration  of  other  nations.  To  be 
humane,  to  be  loyal  to  one's  own  cause,  and  to  respect  a 
like  loyalty  in  others  as  a  precious  and  inviolable  thing,  — 
this  was  right  conduct,  according  to  Professor  Royce.  And 
I,  for  one,  see  no  flaw  in  this  ideal. 

267 


268 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


But  we  are  interested  here  in  the  philosophy  of  the  mat- 
ter. Professor  Royce  believed  that  he  found  a  theoretical 
justification  for  his  ideal  in  his  view  of  the  moral  solidarity 
of  the  community.  Our  real  selves  emerge  only  in  social 
relations;  the  best  Hfe  always  springs  from  a  felt  interde- 
pendence. *^The  detached  individual  is  an  essentially  lost 
being."  It  is  the  essence  of  Christianity  and  of  sound 
morals  that  a  man  can  be  saved  only  through  loyalty  — 
*' through  the  willing  service  of  a  community."  **You  can- 
not save  masses  of  lost  individuals  through  the  triumph  of 
mere  democracy,"  because  so  long  as  men  remain  mere 
masses  or  aggregates  of  individuals  they  have  not  been 
regenerated.  Their  salvation  requires  their  identifying 
themselves  through  loyalty,  devotion  and  sacrifice  with 
some  higher  life,  such  as  that  of  the  nation.  Similarly 
*Hhe  salvation  of  the  world  will  be  found,  if  at  all,  through 
uniting  the  already  existing  communities  of  mankind  with 
higher  communities,  and  not  through  merely  freeing  the 
peoples  from  their  oppressors."  In  other  words  just  as 
individuals  are  saved  by  loyalty  to  lesser  communities,  so 
nations  may  be  saved  only  by  identifying  themselves  with 
the  Great  Community,  by  serving  *'the  cause  of  the  com- 
munity of  mankind."  ^ 

What  shall  we  say  of  the  consistency  of  this  teaching  with 
the  earlier  metaphysics  of  its  author?  The  crux  of  the  mat- 
ter, as  I  see  it,  lies  in  the  fact  that  for  Professor  Royce  the 
Great  Community  instead  of  being  an  established  fact  is 
the  object  of  a  somewhat  doubtful  hope.  **  Every  idealist," 
he  says,  *' believes  himself  to  have  rational  grounds  for  the 
faith  that  somewhere,  and  in  some  world,  and  at  some  time, 
the  ideal  will  triumph,  so  that  a  survey,  a  divine  synopsis 
of  all  time,  somehow  reveals  the  lesson  of  all  sorrow,  the 
meaning  of  all  tragedy,  the  triumph  of  the  spirit."  ^  Abso- 
lute optimism  is  here  attenuated  to  a  sweeping  act  of  faith  in 
the  inscrutable.  There  are  signs  of  promise  in  the  interna- 
tional bonds  forged  by  industry  and  science.     But  we  can 

^  The  Hope  of  the  Great  Community y  pp.  46,  48,  49. 
2  Op.  cil.,  p.  27. 


WAR  AND   PROGRESS 


269 


make  no  predictions.  ''We  do  not  know  whether  the  sun, 
for  which  the  genuine  lover  of  mankind  and  of  the  ideal  long, 
will  ever  rise  in  any  future  which  we  human  beings  can 
foresee  for  our  own  race."  Meanwhile  we  must  cling  to 
the  ideal,  beheving  that  if  its  enemies  triumph  then  ''there 
will  be  no  further  worth  in  the  continued  existence  of  human 
beings."  ^ 

If  such  statements  do  not  contradict  the  central  thesis 
of  absolute  idealism  it  is  at  any  rate  clear  that  they  are  in 
no  sense  an  expression  of  it.  Absolute  idealism  is  essen- 
tially the  thesis  that  things  as  they  are  afford  both  the  sanc- 
tion of  right  conduct  and  the  clue  to  the  ideal  —  not,  of 
course,  things  in  their  multiplicity,  but  in  their  larger  uni- 
ties. These  larger  unities  afford  the  sanction  of  right  con- 
duct, in  the  sense  that  it  is  one's  duty  to  identify  oneself 
with  them,  participate  in  their  self-realization,  or,  as  Pro- 
fessor Royce  would  say,  be  loyal  to  them.  They  afford 
the  clue  to  the  ideal,  as  suggesting  that  it  is  in  wholeness, 
and  in  wholeness  of  the  type  which  they  represent,  that  the 
ulttmate  perfection  is  to  be  found. 

Now  it  is  evident  that  Professor  Royce  is  quite  prepared 
to  take  the  side  of  international  justice  and  humanity  quite 
regardless  of  things  as  they  are.  When  he  speaks  of  loyalty 
to  the  Great  Community,  it  is  not  loyalty  to  an  actual  cor- 
porate entity,  but  to  an  idea.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  one 
might  ask  him,  and  I  can  readily  conceive  of  Professor 
Bosanquet  as  asking  the  question,  "How  can  one  be  loyal 
to  the  community  of  mankind?  "  One  can  be  loyal  to  one's 
self,  or  to  one's  family,  or  to  the  state,  because  these  are 
genuine  entities  having  a  self-consciousness  and  will  of  their 
own  with  which  we  can  unite.  But  to  speak  of  loyalty  to 
the  Great  Community  when  one  means  merely  loyalty  to 
"the  cause," 2  —  merely  the  hope  of  bringing  about  such  a 
community  —  is  to  use  the  term  loyalty  in  an  extended,  if 
not,  indeed,  in  an  equivocal  sense.  In  the  original  sense 
one's  loyalty  was  claimed  by  the  larger  being  to  which  one 

^  Op.  cit.,  pp.  26-27,  28. 
2  Op.  cit.,  p.  32. 


270 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


belonged.  The  self  can  thus  legitimately  claim  the  alle- 
giance of  the  component  impulse,  or  the  state  that  of  the 
component  individual.  But  the  community  of  mankind 
cannot  in  the  same  sense  claim  the  allegiance  of  nations 
until  there  is  such  a  community  which  has  a  self  and  a  will 
of  its  own.  If  there  were  a  Great  Community  it  would  be 
every  man's  duty  to  be  loyal  to  it,  as  to  his  greater  self.  But 
it  is  evident  that  we  would  be  arguing  in  a  circle  if  we  were 
to  argue  that  loyalty  to  the  Great  Community  requires 
that  one  exert  oneself  to  bring  about  the  existence  of  the 
Great  Community.  It  is  as  though  one  were  to  argue  the 
obligation  to  marry,  from  the  principle  of  conjugal  fidelity. 
I  have  said  that  according  to  absolute  idealism  the  clue 
to  the  ultimate  perfection  of  the  absolute  is  to  be  found  in 
the  larger  unities.  The  largest  unity  of  human  life  is  history. 
Hence  absolute  idealism  has  inevitably  tended  to  a  philosophy 
of  history,  in  which  the  larger  historical  relations  and  forces 
were  interpreted  as  revealing  the  life  of  the  Absolute  Spirit. 
Professor  Royce  follows  this  method  in  so  far  as  he  contends 
that  the  Great  Community  must  be  made  up  of  various 
distinct  nationalities,^  and  in  so  far  as  he  emphasizes  the 
moral  and  cultural,  as  distinguished  from  the  political  role 
and  influence  of  communities.^  But  the  larger  aspect  of 
history  is  the  rivalry  of  races  and  states.  Thus  far  at  any 
rate,  nations  have  not  been  united  by  a  common  loyalty,  but 
have  been  divided  by  selfish  ambition  and  pride.  How,  then, 
do  states  find  a  place  in  the  Absolute  Whole?  By  being  har- 
monized and  unified?  If  we  are  to  judge  by  history,  no. 
The  broadest  hint  which  history  conveys  is  that  self-deter- 
mining nations  contribute  to  the  whole,  by  contrast,  balance 
and  alternation.  Higher  or  more  adequate  national  types 
are  forged  in  the  heat  of  conflict  and  exalted  by  the  subjuga- 
tion and  assimilation  of  their  rivals.  They  serve  the  whole 
by  increasing  its  richness,  diversity  and  movement.  If  the 
good  is  to  be  judged  by  the  real,  and  the  real  by  the  larger 
totahties  that  fall  within  our  knowledge,  then   something 

^  Op.  cit.,  pp.  50  fif. 
2  Op.  cil.y  pp.  54  fif. 


WAR   AND   PROGRESS 


271 


like  this,  the  Hegelian  philosophy  of  history,  would  appear 
to  be  the  best  justified  conclusion.  That  Professor  Royce 
does  not  reach  it  proves,  I  think,  both  the  soundness  of  his 
moral  intuitions  and  the  looseness  of  his  adherence  during 
his  last  years  to  the  fundamental  premises  of  his  idealistic 
metaphysics. 

2.  Professor  Bosanquet's  Hegelianism.  When  we  turn 
to  Professor  Bosanquet  we  find  sound  absolutist  doctrine, 
courageously  maintained  despite  the  author's  evident  dis- 
position to  align  himself  with  the  protagonists  of  humanity 
and  peace.  In  so  far  as  he  speaks  of  communities  he  means 
communities  that  actually  exist,  not  communities  that  sub- 
sist only  in  the  hopes  and  aspirations  of  right-minded  men. 
The  state  is  such  a  community,  because  there  is,  in  this  case, 
a  ** general  will,"  based  on  a  sense  of  spiritual  community, 
and  expressing  itself  in  visible  authorities  and  tangible 
powers.  Founded  on  ^^a  very  high  degree  of  common  ex- 
perience, tradition  and  aspiration,''  the  state  has  ''the  dis- 
tinctive function  of  dictating  the  final  adjustment  in  mat- 
ters of  external  action."  ^ 

"The  individual's  private  will  ...  is  certainly  and  literally  a 
part  of  the  communal  will.  There  is  no  other  material  of  which 
his  will  can  be  made.  If  he  rejects  the  communal  will  in  part,  he 
rejects  it  on  the  basis  of  what  it  is  in  him,  not  from  any  will  of  his 
own,  which  has  a  different  source." 

"Plato  shows  the  right  line,  surely.  The  group  must  have  the 
same  myth,  i.e.,  the  same  consciousness  of  unity.  It  does  not 
matter  how  they  got  it." 

"The  body  which  is  to  be  in  sole  or  supreme  command  of  force 
for  the  common  good  must  possess  a  true  general  will,  and  for  that 
reason  must  be  a  genuine  community  sharing  a  common  sentiment 
and  animated  by  a  common  tradition."  ^ 

This  general  will  or  group  will  is  "the  central  force  and 
right  of  human  nature,"  "alike  in  logic  and  in  fact,"  which 
is  Fichte's  contention.  ''It  is  a  force  primarily  rational  and 
moral,  not  militant  at  all.     It  is,  in  truth,  the  same  thing 

*  Social  and  International  Ideals,  pp.  294,  273. 
2  Ibid.j  pp.  272,  277,  292. 


272 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


as  conscience;  it  is  the  desire  of  social  man  to  bring  order 
into  himself  and  his  world.  This  is  why  it  makes  him  fight 
so  furiously,  whether  he  is  right  or  wrong.  It  is,  in  princi- 
ple, man  seeking  his  birthright."  ^  The  state  combines  the 
prerogatives  of  maintaining  for  its  members  ^Hhe  external 
conditions  necessary  to  the  best  life  "  in  general,  and  of 
securing  in  history  at  large  its  own  *  individual  mission."  ^ 

Internationalism  is  not  to  be  counted  on  as  a  means  of 
peace,  nor  can  peace  be  enforced  by  any  international  league 
because  ^' there  is  no  organism  of  humanity,"  no  '^communal 
consciousness  "  of  all  mankind.^  In  other  words  the  many 
nations  do  not  in  point  of  fact  possess,  as  the  individual 
state  does,  a  general  will.  ** Their  ^general  wills'  taken 
together  are  not  one  will,  that  is,  they  have  not  in  common 
the  same  principal  objects,  or  views  of  life,  and  therefore 
they  are  likely  to  diverge  in  their  desire  for  peace,  under 
different  conditions."  ^ 

The  Great  Community  is  not  only  not  an  actuality  which 
may  rightly  command  the  allegiance  of  men,  but  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  such  a  community  of  mankind  is  desirable. 
"  Many  people  are  very  good  friends  apart  who  would  quarrel 
if  they  kept  house  together.  Is  not  this  likely  to  be  true  of 
nations?  "  he  asks.  Furthermore,  even  if  they  could  be 
cured  of  quarrelling,  humanity  might  be  impoverished  by 
an  excessive  sameness.  The  important  thing  in  human  life 
after  all  is  not  that  individuals  should  be  saved,  but  that 
certain  highly  developed  and  unique  modes  of  life  should  be 
preserved.  ''Our  primary  loyalty  is  to  a  quality,  not  to  a 
crowd."  There  is  something  ''weak-kneed  in  humanitarian- 
ism."  "It  wants  to  set  up  against  patriotism  the  common 
good  of  humanity.  But  there  is  not  very  much  that  it 
can  set  up  on  this  basis.  For  the  fact  is,  that  the  quality  of 
humanity  —  whether  culture  or  humaneness  —  is  rather  to  be 
discovered  in  the  Ufe  of  the  great  civilized  nations,  with  all 
their  faults,  than  in  what  is  common  to  the  life  of  all  men."  ^ 

1  Ibid.,  pp.  317,  306.  2  Ibid.,  pp.  271,  275. 

»  Ibid.y  p.  291.  4  Ibid.,  pp.  314-315. 

^  Ibid.f  pp.  291,  14-15. 


WAR  AND   PROGRESS 


273 


Patriotism  is  thus  a  higher  motive  than  humanity  because 
it  expresses  one's  identity  with  the  higher  moral  being  of 
the  state,^  and  because  it  is  a  loyalty  to  quaHty  rather  than 
to  quantity,  to  civilization  rather  than  to  mankind.  "A 
true  patriotism  is  in  the  first  place  a  daily  and  sober  loyalty, 
which  recognizes  the  root  of  our  moral  being  in  the  citizen 
spirit  and  citizen  duty;  and  in  the  second  place  is  a  love  for 
our  country  as  an  instrument  and  embodiment  of  truth, 
beauty,  and  kindness,  or,  in  the  largest  and  profoundest 
sense  of  the  word,  of  religion."  ^ 

Human  society  at  large,  then,  retains  an  aspect  of  plural- 
ism and  externaHty.  It  is  not  itself  a  community,  but  is  a 
more  or  less  accidental  and  casual  relation  of  communities. 

"  A  number  of  great  systems,  very  profoundly  differing  in  life, 
mind  and  institutions,  existing  side  by  side  in  peace  and  co-' 
operation,  and  each  contributing  to  the  worid  an  individual  best, 
irreducible  to  terms  of  the  others  —  this  might  be,  I  do  not  say 
must  be,  a  finer  and  higher  thing  than  a  single  body  with  a 
homogeneous  civilization  and  a  single  communal  will. 

"  I  am  assuming  that  the  experience  and  tradition  of  states  re- 
main as  they  are  to-day,  too  highly  individual  to  permit  of  a 
thoroughly  common  mind  and  of  a  true  general  will,  but  that  they 
remain  peaceful  neighbors  with  their  full  national  differences, 
because  they  have  every  reason  for  friendship  and  none  for  enmity^ 
and  are  united  in  all  sorts  of  common  enterprises." 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  in  this  picture  of  a  happy  neighbor- 
hood, a  sort  of  "Spotless  Town  "  of  nations,  it  is  assumed 
that  the  neighbors  live  at  peace.  This  Professor  Bosan- 
quet  thinks  will  take  care  of  itseK,  if  only  each  nation  will 
"do  right  at  home,  and  banish  sinister  interests  and  class 
privileges."  ^  '^A  healthy  state,"  we  are  told,  "is  non-mili- 
tant." It  will  be  pre-occupied  with  the  higher  non-compe- 
titive interests.  War  is  symptomatic  of  "internal  disease."  ^ 
Calamities  like  the  present  war  are  due  not  to  "the  communal 

*  Ibid.,  p.  16. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  300,  297. 
'  Ibid.,  p.  309. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  V,  278,  280. 


274 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


sense  of  a  function  and  a  mission/^  nor  to  the  *' belief  that 
the  community  has  a  conscience,"  but  to  the  fact  that  such 
consciences  are  not  sufficiently  enlightened.^ 

Now  it  is  evident  that  such  arguments  as  these  would 
apply  as  well  to  the  individual  as  to  the  state.^  Why 
should  not  individuals  live  as  peaceful  neighbors,  each 
governed  by  his  own  will,  thus  avoiding  the  levelling  mon- 
otony of  a  national  communal  will?  Why  may  it  not  be 
said  that  since  a  healthy  individual  is  non-militant  murder 
and  theft  are  symptoms  of  internal  disease,  and  that  there- 
fore the  way  to  domestic  security  is  by  the  moral  reform  of 
individuals? 

I  suppose  that  Professor  Bosanquet  would  be  deterred 
from  saying  this  by  the  very  obvious  fact  that  in  order  to 
carry  on  the  activities  of  education  you  have  first  got  to 
have  domestic  security.  But  precisely  the  same  thing  is 
true  of  the  larger  neighborhood  of  nations.  The  very  possi- 
bility of  cultivating  the  desirable  non-militant  temper  predi- 
cates that  one  shall  be  let  alone  to  cultivate  it.  International 
police,  like  domestic  police,  are  a  necessary  means  of  improv- 
ing mankind  to  the  point  at  which  police  shall  be  no  longer 
necessary.  Professor  Bosanquet  seems  to  ignore  the  real 
problem  of  peace,  which  is  how  mankind  can  reach  that 
happy  condition  in  which  each  nation  can  safely  give  itself 
over  to  *'the  real  and  fundamental  love  for  the  things  that 
are  not  diminished  by  being  shared  —  such  as  kindness, 
beauty,  truth";  and  can  afford  to  leave  its  neighbor  to  do 
the  same,  with  the  feeling  that  *'it  is  not  courteous  or  in- 
deed possible  to  pass  judgment  on  the  patriotism  of  a  great 
neighboring  nation. ' '  ^  These  last  words  were  written  in  i  g  1 1 
of  Germany,  and  events  afford  an  ironical  commentary  on 
them.  It  is  not  for  England  or  any  of  the  democratic  and 
peace-loving  commonwealths,  a  question  of  what  is  courte- 

*  Ihid.,  p.  279. 

*  Professor  Bosanquet  expresses  his  agreement  with  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell 
so  far  as  concerns  the  establishment  of  an  international  authority  {op.  ciL, 
p.  293);  while  Mr.  Russell  goes  further  and  consistently  uses  the  same  argu- 
ment against  the  authority  of  the  state. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  II,  12. 


WAR  AND   PROGRESS 


275 


ous,  but  Of  what  IS  ../..  So  long  as  powers  Uke  Germany 
are  at  large  it  is  a  httle  hard  to  be  told  that  one  should  stay 
at  home  and  reform  oneself.  Criminal  insanity  is  doubtless 
a  disease  to  be  cured  in  the  end  by  the  advancement  of 
science;  but  unless  the  criminally  insane  were  restrained 
no  agency  of  civihzation  could  pursue  its  beneficent  way 
not  even  the  laboratories  of  medical  science 

But  there  is  another  theoretical  and  more  fundamental 
defect  m  Professor  Bosanquet's  reasoning.  How  can  one 
be  assured  that  a  healthy  state,  or  an  enlightened  conscience, 
shall  not  be  mihtant?  Only  by  defining  health  and  enlight- 
enment to  start  with  in  terms  of  tolerance  and  humanity 

JhZ:7.U'':  '"  ^r'^  v'^'  '^  abandoning  the  fundamental 
thesis  of  this  type  of  pohtical  philosophy,  the  thesis  that  the 
state  IS  the  inalhble  moral  authority.     If  you  demand  that 
the  state  shall  conform  to  the  dictates  of  humanity  before 
you  accept  its  poHcy  as  authoritative,  then  you  set  another 
authority  above  it.     This  higher  authority  to  which  you 
virtually  appeal  is  the  interest  of  humanity  at  large     There 
is  no  escape,  I  think,  from  this  dilemma.     Either  you  argue 
right  conduct  from  its  effects  upon  all  whom  it  touches 
reasomng  from  its  consequences  to  its  rectitude;    or  yoJ 
argue  right  conduct  from  its  authoritative  origin     In  the 
tirst  case  you  abandon  the  doctrine  of  the  finality  of  the 
state,  as  the  highest  spiritual  entity  on  earth  from  which 
alone  its  members  derive  their  being  and  their  value.     In 
the  second  case  you  must  be  prepared  to  disregard  the 
happiness  and  well-being  of  alien  humanity.     AHen  states 
acting  upon  a  like  mandate  of  national  conscience  will  ex- 
hibit a  like  disregard;  and  war  will  be  the  natural  by-product 
of  morality  itself. 

3.  The  International  **  State  of  Nature."  That  the  sec- 
ond of  these  alternatives  is  the  more  consistent  with  Pro- 
fessor Bosanquet^s  Hegelian  premises,  is  unmistakably  ap- 
parent m  this  author's  acceptance  of  the  formula  that  na- 
tions are  to  one  another  in  a  ^^ state  of  nature.'^ '  By  this 
phrase  is  meant  a  state  of  anarchy,  in  which  several  units 

'  "Patriotism  in  the  Perfect  State,"  The  International  Crisis,  p.  136. 


! 

-■ 

■ ..  '     ■      ■".■■■■■:.■-      '  ■■  ■,           '■     -                       •     '"■'.■■     :  -- 

276 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


of  life,  each  a  law  unto  itself,  acknowledge  no  common  law. 
Hobbes  applied  the  phrase  to  the  condition  of  individuals  in 
an  imaginary  time  prior  to  the  institution  of  the  state. 
There  being  no  sovereign  over  all,  each  individual  was 
justified  in  acting  solely  on  the  principle  of  private  interest. 
Applied  to  the  plurality  of  states,  it  means  that  inasmuch  as 
there  is  no  sovereign  universal  polity,  each  state  is  justified 
in  acting  solely  on  the  principle  of  national  interest.  The 
difficulty  with  Hobbes's  analysis  lay  in  the  fact  that  it 
failed  to  provide  for  any  way  of  escape  from  the  state  of 
nature.  Until  the  sovereign  power  was  established  there 
was  no  obligation  to  be  just,  and  without  such  an  obligation 
to  be  just  there  was  no  reason  why  any  individual  should 
consent  to  the  establishment  of  the  sovereign  power.  The 
idealist  would  avoid  Hobbes's  difficulty  by  insisting  that 
the  state  of  nature  among  private  individuals  never  existed. 
There  always  was  a  corporate  society  wherever  there  were 
individuals;  and  there  was  always,  therefore,  such  a  corpo- 
rate sanction  for  right  conduct.  But  in  the  case  of  the  gen- 
eral aggregate  of  mankind,  Professor  Bosanquet  regards 
the  state  of  nature  as  an  historical  fact.  Among  states 
there  is  not  even  as  yet  a  common  norm  of  feeling  and  judg- 
ment on  which  a  universal  poUty  could  be  based.^  Each 
state  stands  isolated  as  the  sole  guardian  of  the  treasures 
under  its  charge.  They  would  be  ''nothing,"  they  would 
not  be  ''in  the  world,"  without  it.  Hence  the  state  needs 
"above  all  things  to  be  strong."  "Strength  in  war  is  the 
first  condition  of  the  state's  fulfillment  of  its  function."  2 
Professor  Bosanquet  appears  to  beUeve  that  this  doctrine 
is  mitigated  by  the  qualification  that  it  applies  to  states 
"as  now  existing."  But  if,  as  he  says,  "a  state  is  and  can 
be  determined  only  by  its  own  good,"  if  "states  are  the  sole 
ultimate  judges  of  their  differences  and  their  honor,"  ^  why 
should  they  acknowledge  any  obligation  to  cultivate  a  true 
general  will  of  mankind,  and  to  promote  the  institution  of 

^  Ihid.j  p.  138. 

2  This  is  Hegelianism  approved  by  Bosanquet,  ibid.,  pp.  i35»  136,  141- 

»  Ibid.,  pp.  151,  141,  143- 


WAR  AND  PROGRESS 


277 


a  universal  polity?  Of  course  there  can  be  no  such  obliga- 
tion. An  international  community  may,  as  Professor 
Bosanquet  says,  some  day  grow  up,  but  there  is  no  moral 
reason  why  as  an  idealist  and  an  Englishman  he  should 
speed  the  day.^ 

"People  who  are  satisfied,"  he  tells  us,  "do  not  want  to 
make  war;  and  in  a  well-organized  community  people  are 
satisfied."  ^  But  let  us  suppose  a  community  which  is  like 
the  child  who  "won't  be  happy  till  he  gets  it,"  —gets,  for 
example,  a  toothsome  slice  of  territory.  Such  a  supposition 
is  not  a  great  strain  upon  the  imagination.  If  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  organization  within  the  sphere  of  that  community's 
interests,  then  to  be  well-organized  and  satisfied  would 
mean  that  the  territory  in  question  should  be  well-digested, 
or  "consolidated."  If  it  should  happen  that  some  other 
state  wanted  the  same  slice  of  territory,  it  would  have  to 
go  hungry,  or  appeal  to  war,  the  ultimate  arbiter.  Professor 
Bosanquet  and  men  of  his  type  are  not  troubled  with  this 
particular  sort  of  appetite.  They  may  be  more  easily  and 
innocently  satisfied.  But  so  long  as  they  profess  the  phil- 
osophy we  have  been  discussing  they  would  have  no  ground 
whatsoever  on  which  to  challenge  the  tastes  and  ambitions 
of  another  nation,  provided  it  was  reasonably  united 
and  state-conscious  in  its  policy.  It  is  little  wonder  that 
Professor  Bosanquet  hesitates  to  condemn  war:  "For  war, 
as  for  all  other  evils  and  accidents,  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be 
said.  Each  of  them  by  itself  is  clearly  a  thing  to  be  fought 
against,  but  without  any  of  them  at  all  —  well,  life  would 
very  soon  generate  new  ones."  ^ 

Our  author  says  that  "the  creed  of  violence  and  self- 
interest  of  which  we  hear  to-day,"  results  from  ''the  passage 
of  a  large  and  many-sided  philosophical  doctrine  into  the 
hands  of  ignorant  and  biased  amateurs,  soldiers,  historians 
and  politicians."  ^    I  am  inclined  on  the  contrary  to  believe 

1  Ibid.,  p.  150. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  145. 
^  Ibid.,  p.  143. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  140. 


278 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


that  *'the  great  German  philosophy/'  though  it  is  by  no 
means  the  dominant  motive,  affords  the  most  logical  justi- 
fication of  the  course  pursued  by  the  great  German  men  of 
affairs. 

II.    HISTORY   AND   PROGRESS 

I.  The  Drama  of  History.     If  the  nation-state  is  regarded 
as  the  supreme  human  embodiment  of  wholeness  and  per- 
fection, there  is  nothing  to  mediate  between  the  state  and 
the  Absolute,  except  the  process  of  history.     The  Hegelian 
substitute  for  the  international  community  is  the  interna- 
tional drama  as  this  is  unfolded  in  time.     Just  what  the 
plot  of  the  drama  is,  is  not  clear,  but  it  is  evidently  a  tale 
of  tragic  conflict.     Each  nation  has  its  part  to  play,  its 
entrance  and  its  exit.     To  make  the  drama  a  success  each 
must  play  its  own  appointed  part,  — -  be  true  to  its  own 
character;    and  when  it  gets  through,  it  should  leave  the 
stage.     Some  nations  have  small  parts  and  some  large. 
Germany,  according  to  Fichte,  Hegel  and  their  present-day 
descendants,  has  a  large  part;  and  needs  a  little  more  room, 
—  room  that  is  usurped  by  players  who  have  spoken  their 
lines,  but  have  not  had  the  grace  to  retire.     Under  these 
conditions  the  player  having  the  leading  part  in  the  present 
act  of  the  drama  of  history,  is  justified  in  using  his  elbows 
to  get  the  room  he  needs.     The  player  having  the  leading 
part  in  the  act  now  staged,  is  called  by  Hegel  ''the  present 
bearer  of  the  world  spirit.''     ''Against  the  absolute  right  of 
the  present  bearer  of  the  world  spirit,  the  spirit  of  other 
nations  are  absolutely  without  right.     The  latter  just  like 
the  nations  whose  epochs  have  passed,  count  no  longer  in 
universal  history."  ^ 

Such  a  view  leads  to  a  kind  of  sanctified  Darwinism.  The 
success  of  a  nation  in  war,  its  political  and  economic  expan- 
sion, are  taken  as  proof  that  it  has  more  of  "spirituality  " 
in  It.  War  gains  for  nations,  "for  the  individualities  thus 
engaged,  the  position  of  power  corresponding  to  their  in- 
terior significance.-'     Citing    the   above    from    Troeltsch, 

'  Quoted  by  Dewey,  German  Philosophy  and  Politics,  p.  119. 


WAR   AND   PROGRESS 


279 


von  Hiigel  goes  on  to  say:  "I  take  the  error  here  to  spring 
from  a  coalescence  of  the  German  intense  longing  for,  and 
impressedness  by,  power  —  even  by  power  of  the  physical 
kind  —  and  the  equally  German  desire  to  trace,  beyond  the 
possibility  of  cavil,  the  operation  of  spirit."  ^ 

Carried  out  consistently,  of  course,  this  theory  would 
mean  that  the  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  states  were  richer 
spiritually  than  the  Jews;  or  Rome  than  Greece.  It  would 
mean  that  the  Holy  Alliance  after  the  defeat  of  Napoleon  or 
Imperial  Germany  after  the  crushing  of  France  represented 
the  redemption  of  Europe  by  a  new  burst  of  spirituality. 
But  the  worst  of  this  doctrine  lies  not  in  its  applica- 
tion to  the  past,  but  in  its  use  as  a  working  creed  in  the 
present.  It  conduces,  as  M.  Chevrillon  has  expressed  it,  to 
a  nation's  "mistaking  its  appetite  for  a  mission."  It  gives 
to  the  exercise  of  brute  strength  all  the  unction  and  inward 
ecstacy  of  religious  inspiration. 

2.  Eternalism.  The  perfection  of  a  drama  is  to  be  seen 
not  in  the  end  but  in  the  whole.  The  first  act  is  as  proper 
a  part  of  it  as  the  last.  It  is  implied  in  absolute  idealism 
that  the  historical  process  in  its  entirety  is  taken  up  into 
the  eternal  whole;  a  whole  which,  while  it  contains  all  change, 
does  not  itself  suffer  change. 

It  needs  no  philosophical  subtlety  to  see  that  this  view  of 
history  contradicts  the  common  man's  conception  of  prog- 
ress.^  It  is  half  of  progress,  according  to  the  common 
view,  to  be  able  to  leave  something  behind  and  get  rid  of  it 
altogether.  Progress  is  inspired  both  to  achieve  a  better 
and  to  escape  a  worse.  But  according  to  idealism  nothing 
is  lost,  nothing  has  been  in  vain.  The  future  is  not  to  wipe 
out  the  past,  but  is  to  round  it  out.  The  past  is  to  be  supple- 
mented and  not  superseded.  The  tendency  of  such  a  phil- 
osophy is  to  cultivate  a  sense  for  the  values  of  the  past, 
rather  than  a  condemnation  of  its  futility  and  backward- 

^  Comment  on,  and  citation  from,  E.  Troeltsch,  "Personality  and  State 
Morality,"  Neue  Rundschau,  p.  152,  etc.,  in  von  Hugel,  The  German  Soul,  pp.- 
loi,  103. 

2  I  have  dealt  with  this  matter  more  fully  in  Present  Philosophical  Tenden- 
cies, pp.  188  fif. 


28o 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


ness.  The  true  expression  of  this  faith  is  to  see  the  good  of 
history  as  a  whole  rather  than  that  good  which  distinguishes 
the  part  preferred  and  aspired  to.  Idealism  is  contempla- 
tive and  tolerant  rather  than  active  and  partisan. 

Immortality,  in  this  view,  means  not  a  life  in  the  time  to 
come,  whether  in  another  world,  or  in  the  memory  of  pos- 
terity; but  a  place  in  the  eternal  whole.  Immortality  of  this 
type  is  not  a  distinction.  There  is  nothing  so  humble,  nor 
so  detestable,  as  not  to  find  its  place.  In  the  home  of  the 
Absolute  there  are  indeed  many  mansions.  Thus  idealism 
is,  again,  essentially  the  all-conserving,  the  all-condoning 
philosophy.  It  assures  us  that  every  reality  is  of  value,  but 
first  requires  us  so  to  conceive  value  that  nothing  real  shall 
fail  to  qualify. 


\ , 


f 


1 


CHAPTER  XX 
THE  REVOLT  AGAINST  REASON 

In  a  letter  to  Leigh  Hunt,  Byron  once  wrote: 

"  I  have  not  had  time  to  attack  your  system,  which  ought  to 
be  done,  were  it  only  because  it  is  a  system."  ^ 

This  expresses  a  very  common  human  sentiment  which  ap- 
pears to  have  its  regular  periodic  revivals  wherever  the  in- 
tellect has  been  too  extravagantly  worshipped.  The  Sophists 
and  Socrates  were  its  exponents,  after  the  confident  ration- 
alism of  the  first  Greek  philosophers;  Duns  Scotus  repre- 
sented it  against  the  great  system  of  Scholastic  orthodoxy; 
and  Rousseau  was  its  protagonist  after  the  ''Enlightenment  " 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century.  In  our  own  day  it  appears  as 
the  inevitable  reaction  against  the  pretensions  of  exact 
science  and  the  a  priori  claims  of  absolute  idealism. 

I.    VARIETIES   OF  ANTI-INT ELLECTUALISM 

I.  The  Motives  of  Anti-intellectualism.  The  intellect  is 
in  our  day  reproached  with  failure  in  two  respects,  in  respect 
of  knowledge,  and  in  respect  of  life.  You  cannot  know  with 
it,  or  live  by  it.  I  do  not  mean  that  every  anti-intellectualist 
subscribes  to  such  a  wholesale  indictment,  but  that  this  for- 
mula will  cover  the  different  motives  which  have  impelled 
some  one  and  some  another  of  the  anti-intellectualists. 

The  opinion  that  the  intellect  is  inadequate  for  knowledge 
may  reflect,  for  example,  a  moody  scepticism,  a  weariness  or 
disillusionment  of  the  human  mind  which  compares  the 
''petty  done  "  with  the  "undone  vast,"  and  especially  with 
the  vast  promises  of  reason.  Or  it  may  be  the  outcome,  as 
in  the  case  of  Mr.  F.  H.  Bradley,  of  a  sort  of  self-refutation 
of  reason,  a  demonstration  of  the  hopeless  dialectical  snarls 

1  Letters,  Prothero's  edition,  Vol.  Ill,  248. 

281 


282 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


in  which  the  intellect  entangles  itself.^  These  would  be 
motives  prompting  to  a  behef  in  the  inherent  weakness  of 
reason.  But  it  is  more  characteristic  of  our  own  day  to 
charge  the  intellect  with  incapacity  to  know  this  or  that 
feature  of  the  real  worid.  Thus  the  empiricist  says  that  the 
intellect  cannot  know  particular  facts,  as  sense  does.  The 
sentimentalist,  the  mystic,  the  voluntarist,  all  alike  contend 
that  the  intellect  with  its  abstraction  and  indirection  can 
never  reach  the  deeper  reality;  but  must  be  superseded  by 
feeling,  ecstasy,  intuition,  or  some  other  mode  of  immediate 
insight.  So  much  for  the  alleged  theoretic  insufficiency  of 
the  intellect. 

The  practical  objection  to  the  intellect  may  be  a  matter 
of  taste.     Some  are  repelled  by  the  dead,  cold,  static,  color- 
less aspect  which  the  worid  presents  when  the  intellect  gets 
through  with  it.     Thus  Hegel's  intellectualistic  account  of 
the  worid  has  been  likened  to  ''a  bloodless  ballet  of  cate- 
gories."   William  James  speaks  with  aversion  of  'Hhe  block 
universe.''     People  who  are  not  fond  of  mathematics  and 
logic  resent  the  idea  of  living  in  a  world  made  of  formulas  and 
syllogisms.     Or  we  may  insist  that  the  world  which  the  in- 
tellect builds  is  not  only  repugnant  but  uninhabitable.     Man 
cannot  live  by  bread  alone,  especially  if  having  asked  for 
bread  he  receives  a  stone.     Before  the  soul  can  live  in  the 
worid  it  must  furnish  and  provision  it  with  the  congenial 
objects  provided  by  revelation  and  authority,  or  by  faith 
and  hope.     Then  there  is  the  further  contention,  to  which 
we  have  devoted  some  attention  in  an  eariier  chapter,  that 
men  cannot  act  on  a  mere  intellectual  affirmation.^    The 
intellect,  it  is  said,  is  impotent.     Only  convictions,  passions, 
or  instinctive  impulses  affect  the  conduct  of  men. 

But  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  anti-intellectualism  is 
only  the  negative  implication  of  some  positive  cult,  such  as 
the  cult  of  feeling  or  will.  The  intellect  is  most  often  dis- 
paraged in  behalf  of  the  cult  of  action,  that  gospel  of  Hfe  and 
movement  to  which  we  shall  turn  in  a  later  chapter.     The 

*  Cf.  his  Appearance  and  Reality, 
2  Cf.  above,  p.  lo  ff. 


THE  REVOLT  AG.\INST  REASON 


^^Z 


commonest  form  of  this  cult  is  the  vulgar  worship  of  prac- 
dcality.     The  soliloquizing  Hamlet  and  the  lean  and  hungry 
Cassms  are  open  to  suspicion  because  they  are  not  honestly 
busy.    A  washer-woman  once  told  me,  in  the  spirit  of  kind- 
hest  indulgence,  that  it  might  be  very  nice  to  be  a  professor 
but  her  husband  liked  to  work.     Thinking,  in  this  view,  is  not 
workmg.  It  is  not  even  living.     Of  course,  the  and-intellec- 
tuahst,  whether  sophisticated  or  unsophisticated,  recognizes 
a  hmited  practical  role  for  the  intellect.     But  the  trouble 
with  the  intellect  is  that  it  will  wander  from  home.     Instead 
of  doing  the  chores,  it  roams  in  the  meadows  and  picks 
daisies.     In  other  words  it  is  doctrinaire  and  academic.     It 
should  be  harnessed  to  the  mill  so  that  whenever  it  exerts 
itself  it  will  grind  corn. 

^  2.   Degrees  of  Anti-intellectualism.     It  will  shed  a  further 
light  on  the  modves  of  and-intellectualism,  if  we  disdnguish 
different  degrees  of  it,  differences  in  the  extent  of  its  claims. 
The  most  modest  litde  and-intellectualism  is  the  protest 
against  the  universal  dominion  of  the  intellect,  the  protest 
of  small  cognitive  nadonalides  against  intellectual  imperial- 
ism.    After  naturahsm  the  most  formidable  philosophy  of 
the  last  century  was,  as  we  have  seen,  absolute  idealism. 
But  absolute  ideahsm  inherits  from  Kant  the  thesis  that 
there  is  no  knowledge  without  judgment  and  hence  without 
logic.     All  knowledge  would  on  this  basis  have  an  intellectual 
form.     Against  this  sweeping  assertion  various  philosophies 
have  made  a  stand,  asking  only  that  some  place  be  made  for 
non-intellectual    knowledge.     Pascal,    the    mathemadcian, 
had  said  that  ^'the  heart  has  its  reasons  which  the  intellect 
cannot  penetrate."     Similariy  in  our  own  day,  the  mathe- 
madcally  minded  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell  while  he  is  not  the 
champion  of  the  heart,  enters  a  like  protest  against  the  ex- 
clusive pretensions  of  reason.     Though  he  yields  to  none  in 
his  enthusiasm  for  logic,  and  proposes  to  make  a  religion  of 
the  cult  of  the  intellect,  nevertheless  he  contends  that  over 
and  above  that  ''knowledge  about"  which  is  the  province 
of  the  intellect,  there  is  a  knowledge  of  acquaintance  supplied 
by  sense  or  intuition. 


) 


284 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


A  bolder  form  of  anti-intellectualism  is  the  contention 
that  the  non-intellectual  kind  of  knowledge  is  more  profound 
than  the  intellectual  kind.  The  panpsychist  and  personal 
ideaUst,  as  we  have  seen,  believe  that  by  an  immediate  intui- 
tive awareness  of  ourselves  we  may  dive  into  the  very  heart 
of  things.  The  mystics  and  many  idealists  will  say  with  Lotze 
that  ''reaHty  is  richer  than  thought";  meaning  that  the  great 
One  in  which  all  things  have  their  place  has  to  be  seen  in  a 
vision,  or  ecstatically  felt.  The  intellect  with  its  ideas  can 
only  view  it  now  in  this  aspect  and  now  in  that.  Anti-intel- 
lectualism of  this  intermediate  degree  appears  in  the  very 
common  opinion  that  exact  science  with  its  concepts  and  for- 
mulas can  only  skim  the  surface  of  things.  Nietzsche  affords 
a  good  example.  Logic  and  mechanics  are  only  "an  art  of 
expression,"  not  an  understanding  of  things,  since  they  never 
touch  the  real  "causality." 

*'The  demand  that  everything  should  be  mechanically  explained 
is  the  instinctive  feeling  that  the  most  valuable  and  fundamental 
knowledge  is  to  be  reached  first;  which  is  a  form  of  naivete.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  nothing  that  can  be  counted  and  conceptualized  has 
much  value  for  us;  the  region  which  one  cannot  reach  with  concepts 
has  a  higher  significance  for  us.  Logic  and  mechanics  are  applic- 
able only  to  the  surface  of  things."  ^ 

Finally,  the  extremest  form  of  anti-intellectualism  will  be 
that  in  which  the  intellect  is  positively  incriminated.  Here 
it  is  no  longer  a  question  of  dividing  the  domain  of  knowledge. 
Intellect  which  once  claimed  the  imperial  title  is  now  to  be 
removed  from  office  altogether.  It  is  not  to  be  expelled,  but 
degraded.  It  remains  as  a  practical  faculty,  a  tool  of  action; 
but  it  is  no  longer  to  be  looked  to  for  knowledge  in  the  sense  of 
insight.  So  far  as  insight  is  concerned  the  intellect  is  not  only 
inadequate,  it  is  positively  fallacious.  It  distorts,  misrepre- 
sents and  misleads.  Indeed  it  creates  an  impression  of  reality 
that  is  the  precise  opposite  of  the  truth.  The  intellect  re- 
presents reality  as  made  up  of  discrete  elements  externally 
related;  but  reality  is  in  truth  continuous  and  inter- 
penetrating.    The  intellect  represents  reality  as  extended 

*  Nachgelassene  Werke,  Vol.  XIII,  §  214. 


THE  REVOLT  AGAINST  REASON 


285 


or  spacial,  whereas  reality  is  essentially  temporal  and  flow- 
ing. The  intellect  represents  reality  as  dead  and  passive, 
whereas  it  is  in  truth  alive  and  creative.  For  the  intellect 
reality  is  governed  by  necessity,  but  it  is  essentially  free. 
Intellect  is  useful  if  it  is  used.  It  is  for  action.  But  to  know 
what  the  world  is  like,  to  catch  the  real  flavor  of  things,  to 
apprehend  the  better  and  the  more  divine,  throw  aside  the 
intellect  and  feel  the  Hfe  that  throbs  within  your  breast. 
This  is  the  out  and  out  anti-intellectualism,  of  which  the 
most  distinguished  living  exponent  is  Henri  Bergson. 

In  what  follows  I  shall  not  deal  with  these  motives  in  iso- 
lation, but  with  certain  more  concrete  types  of  anti-intel- 
lectualism that  may  be  numbered  among  the  important  moral 
forces  of  our  age. 

II.    ROMANTICISM 

Romanticism  is  not  new  but  it  is  persistent  and  perhaps 
perennial.^  It  is  the  cult  of  the  spontaneity  of  passion.  In 
behalf  of  spontaneity,  romanticism  protests  against  every 
form  of  external  restraint,  against  institutional  authority, 
and  conventional  standards,  but  above  all  against  the  harsh 
restraint  of  fact.  It  opposes  the  intellect  in  so  far  as  the 
intellect  conforms  itself  to  the  external  order  of  nature.  It 
was  in  this  sense  that  the  romanticism  of  Rousseau  protested 
against  the  intellectual  disillusionment  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century  Enlightenment.  The  heart  has  its  own  rights;  it 
must  not  be  starved.  Since  the  facts  of  nature  clo  not  satisfy 
the  heart,  then  the  heart  must  be  allowed  to  satisfy  itself,  by 
following  promptings  of  its  own,  such  as  the  moral  and  re- 
ligious sentiments. 

In  so  far  as  Kantian  idealism  emphasizes  the  spontaneity 
of  the  mind,  as  opposed  to  its  mere  receptivity,  it  may  be 
said  in  this  broad  sense  to  be  romantic.  But  there  is  evidently 
something  in  Kant  that  limits  and  thwarts  his  romanticism. 
This  is  his  conception  that  mind  has  its  own  laws.  The  only 
spontaneity  which  he  authorizes  is  a  disciplined  spontaneity. 

*  Much  the  best  account  of  romanticism  of  which  I  know  is  to  be  found  in 
Royce's  Spirit  of  Modern  Philosophy ,  Lecture  VI. 


286 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDE.\LS 


But  discipline,  like  external  fact,  exercises  a  kind  of  restraint, 
and  is  therefore  antagonistic  to  the  temper  of  romanticism. 
Moral  spontaneity,  according  to  Kant  and  Fichte,  does,  it  is 
true,  make  its  own  world  and  lead  its  own  life;  but  it  is  sub- 
ject to  the  principle  of  duty,  which  is  a  harsh  task-master. 
Thus  both  intellectual  and  volitional  spontaneity,  accord- 
ing to  Kant,  have  their  own  necessary  ideals  and  their  own 
fixed  procedure.     They,  it  is  true,  create  the  order  of  the 
world,  but  they  are  in  a  manner  compelled  to  create  it  pre- 
cisely as  they  do.     Against  both  of  these  varieties  of  deter- 
mined and  disciplined  spontaneity,  the  early  philosophical 
romanticists  of  Germany,  such  as  Schelling  and  the  Schlegels, 
voiced  an  emphatic  protest.     They  found  the  true  exemplar 
of  spontaneity,  not  in  autonomous  duty,  or  systematic  reason, 
but  in  the  inspiration  of  the  genius.     The  genius  acknowl- 
edges no  articulate  law,  he  yields  to  nothing,  not  even  to  an 
ideal.     He  simply  expresses  himself  and  creates^  from  the 
very  fullness  of  spirit  within  him.     Moralism  and  intel- 
lectualism  according  to  this  higher  romanticism  are  not  only 
constraining,   but  they  are  partial   and  incomplete.     The 
geistiges  Leben  is  a  richer  thing  than  either  duty  or  logic  or 
both  can  possibly  express.     The  appreciation  of  beauty  and 
the  creation  of  art  are  not  only  freer,  but  they  are  also  less 
abstract.     This  is  the  case,  if  for  no  other  reason,  because 
they  are  not  defining  and  analytical.     They  present  the 
whole  of  things,  not  that  mere  skeleton  of  ideas  which  logic 
creates,  but  flesh  and  blood  as  well,  with  all  its  coloring  and 
*' values."     Feeling,  owing  to  its  very  inarticulateness,  is  the 
most  adequate  medium  for  the  infinite  life  of  the  spirit. 

But  romanticism  of  this  idealistic  origin  cannot  rid  itself 
wholly  of  restraint.  It  must  still  profess  allegiance  to  one 
absolute  spirit.  If  that  spirit  cannot  be  fully  represented  by 
any  single  faculty,  by  conscience,  reason,  or  even  by  aesthetic 
appreciation,  since  after  all  taste  is  also  discriminating  and 
partial,  then  it  must  be  identified  with  the  totality  of  human 
spontaneities,  that  is  with  the  history  of  culture.  This  is 
the  view  whose  most  notable  representative  to-day  is 
Rudolph  Eucken. 


THE   REVOLT  AGAINST   REASON 


287 


1 


But  this  view  while  it  legitimates  every  spontaneity  of  the 
individual,  construing  it  as  an  emanation  of  the  universal 
spiritual  life,  at  the  same  time  constrains  the  individual  to 
acknowledge  a  like  spirituaHty  in  every  other  human  creation 
and  aspiration.     It  should  if  consistently  held,  conduce  to  a 
sympathetic    tolerance,    a    healthy    and    undiscriminating 
spiritual  appetite.     But  this  again  is  contrary  to  the  roman- 
tic temper,  for  passion  takes  sides  for  and  against.     And  if 
the  romanticist  is  to  take  his  passions  seriously  he  must  go 
with  their  antipathies  as  well  as  their  sympathies,  he  must 
hate  as  well  as  love.     So  in  the  end  romanticism  tends  to  be 
personal  rather  than  philosophical.     And  since  even  self- 
consistency  is  a  sort  of  thraldom,  the  full  expression  of  the 
romantic  motive  is  found  only  in  the  Byronic  moodiness, 
which  regards  the  passion  of  the  moment  as  the  measure  of 
the  universe  or  as  sufficient  warrant  for  making  a  new  uni- 
verse in  place  of  the  one  which  is  just  now  found  intolerable. 

m.    INSTRUMENTALISM 

Much  the  most  sophisticated  form  of  anti-intellectualism, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  form  most  characteristic  of  our  age, 
is  that  form  which  has  now  come  very  generally  to  be  called 
"instrumentaHsm,''  and  '^hich  is  represented  at  present  by 
the  school  of  James  and  Dewey  in  America.  This  term 
''instrumentaHsm"  is  better  for  our  purpose  than  the  more 
familiar  term  ''pragmatism  "  in  that  it  is  more  limited  and 
definite  in  its  meaning.  According  to  this  view  the  intellect, 
instead  of  being  an  oracle,  is  a  practical  instrument  to  be 
judged  by  the  success  with  which  it  does  its  work. 

I.  Instrumentalism  versus  Kantian  Idealism.  It  is  well 
to  distinguish  this  view  from  Kantian  idealism,  since  they 
have  something  in  common.  For  the  idealist,  too,  the  intel- 
lect is  in  a  sense  an  instrument.  But  it  has  to  be  used  in  a 
certain  way.  The  intellect  has  its  own  laws,  and  in  ordering 
the  world  it  puts  these  into  effect.  Knowing,  in  other  words, 
is  a  matter  of  logical  technique.  By  knowing  what  the  laws 
of  the  intellect  are,  one  can  know  in  advance,  or  a  priori^ 
what  form  its  work  will  assume.     InstrumentaHsm  in  the 


288 


THE  PESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE   REVOLT  AGAINST  REASON 


289 


present  sense,  on  the  other  hand,  aims  to  be  purely  experi- 
mental. The  intellect  is  indeterminate  in  its  nature,  and 
will  adopt  any  methods  that  prove  suitable.  One  cannot 
predict  what  form  its  work  will  finally  assume,  because  that 
will  depend  on  certain  ulterior  satisfactions  that  may  or  may 
not  accrue  from  it.  The  operations  of  the  intellect  are  not 
accredited  until  after  its  work  is  done  and  tried  out. 

Although  this  difference  may  seem  slight  and  almost  pe- 
dantic it  is  the  starting-point  for  a  very  great  divergence  in 
moral  and  rehgious  philosophy.  Let  us  consider  two  in- 
stances in  which  ideaUsm  might  easily  be  confused  with  a 
genuinely  experimental  instrumentalism. 

''That  which  we  call  the  laws  of  nature,"  says  Professor  Bout- 
roux,  *'is  the  sum  total  of  the  methods  we  have  discovered  for 
adapting  things  to  the  mind,  and  subjecting  them  to  be  moulded 
by  the  wUl."  ^ 

A  strain  of  Kantianism  appears  here  in  the  suggestion  that 
the  "mind"  has  a  constitution  of  its  own,  and  that  the 
scientific  work  of  the  intellect  is  an  adaptation  of  things  to 
this  constitution;  and  in  the  further  suggestion  that  ''the 
will  "  has  also  its  peculiar  and  inherent  needs  which  the  mind 
serves  by  fashioning  nature  in  a  manner  that  is  agreeable  to 
them.  In  so  far  as  such  is  the  case,  it  is  evident  that  by 
discovering  in  advance  what  this  mental  constitution  and 
these  needs  of  the  will  are,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  deduce  the 
order  of  nature.  But  in  that  case  knowledge  would  be  a 
priori  as  regards  nature,  and  would  rest  fundamentally  upon 
an  analysis  of  the  self. 

Or  consider  another  statement  of  the  matter,  by  Brune- 
tiere.     According  to  this  writer, 

"The  absolute  necessity  of  the  laws  of  nature  is  after  all  only  a 
postulate  which  we  need  in  order  to  afford  a  sure  basis  for  science, 
and  does  not  at  all  prove  that  this  postulate  is  anything  more  than 
the  expression  of  a  law  wholly  relative  to  our  intelligence."  ^ 

1  ]£mile  Boutroux:  Natural  Law  in  Science  and  Philosophy,  English  trans- 
lation, p.  217. 

2  La  Science  et  la  Religion,  p.  41,  note. 


\ 


fl 


8, 


S 


w. 


m 


In  other  words  the  descriptive  formulas  of  the  exact^sciences 
are  the  way  in  which  the  mind  sets  its  contents  in  order  in 
obedience  to  its  own  inner  needs;  the  laws  of  nature  can  be 
deduced  from  the  law  of  our  intelligence.  This  being  the 
case,  there  is  no  reason  why  the  other  needs  of  the  mind 
should  not  also  be  met.  Thpse  needs  science  does  not  pro- 
vide for.  ^ 

"  What  is  the  meaning  of  life?  Why  are  we  born?  And  why  do 
we  die?  How  ought  we  to  live?  As  if  we  were  destined  to  perish, 
or  as  if  we  were  promised  immortality?  .  .  .  Never,  perhaps,  have 
these  mysterious  questions  pressed  with  greater  force  than  since 
men  have  announced  that  'they  find  nq,  longer  any  mystery  in 
them.'  .  .  .  Stillanother  of  positivism's  mistakes;  another  battle, 
and  another  defeat!  It  has  misconceived  some  of  the  essential 
needs  of  man;  and  failed  to  understand  that  we  can  very  well  live 
without  being  acquainted  with  the  mountains  of  the  moon  or  the 
properties  of  the  ether,  but  not  without  the  imagination's  and  the 
heart's  demanding  and  obtaining  certain  satisfactions  which  science 
and  reason  are  powerless  to  give  them."  ^ 

It  is  here  affirmed  that  there  is  more  to  the  mind  than  "in- 
telligence." There  are  other  "needs  of  man,"  needs  of  "the 
imagination  and  the  heart."  These,  too,  our  knowledge 
must  satisfy,  if  not  in  the  form  of  science,  then  in  the  form 
of  philosophy.  Again  it  would  follow  that  since  the  inner 
needs  of  man  are  going  in  the  end  to  dictate  the  form  knowl- 
edge assumes,  then  this  form  might  be  predicted  in  advance 
from  a  study  of  these  needs. 

Now  I  do  not  say  that  in  any  given  case  it  is  always  possible 
to  draw  an  absolute  line  between  Kantian  ideahsm,  and  the 
instrumentalism  of  James  and  Dewey.  The  two  strands  are 
often  inextricably  interwoven;  and  that  they  are  so  inter- 
woven is  one  of  the  characteristic  features  of  present-day 
thought.  But  the  difference  in  principle  is  unmistakable. 
The  pragmatist  and  instrumentalist  of  the  American  school 
is  always  and  everywhere  unqualifiedly  opposed  to  the  a 
priori  principle  in  knowledge.  The  workabiHty  or  satisfac- 
toriness  of  the  constructions  of  the  intellect  is  not  determined 

*  F.  Brunetiere:  La  Renaissance  de  VIdealisme,  pp.  35-36. 


290 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE  REVOLT  AGAINST  REASON 


291 


by  their  agreement  with  any  preconceived  end;  but  is  always 
contingent  on  their  actually  facilitating  Hfe  when  they  are 
used.  In  other  words  this  view  is  radically  and  consistently 
experimental.  There  follows  from  this  a  conclusion  of  the 
first  importance.  It  is  never  legitimate,  according  to  this  view, 
to  adopt  a  poUcy  regardless  of  the  way  it  affects  the  interests 
on  which  it  impinges.  The  danger  of  ideaUsm  Hes,  as  we 
have  seen,  in  its  justifying  a  man  or  a  nation  in  laying  down 
a  course  of  action  deduced  from  some  theory  as  to  what 
"spirit"  requires,  and  then  persisting  in  it  with  a  ruthless 
disregard  of  the  way  actual  sentient  creatures  happen  to  feel 
about  it.  Experimentalism  never  claims  such  an  inner  or 
"higher"  mandate.  It  accepts  any  actual  pain  or  misery 
which  a  poUcy  may  inflict,  as  just  so  much  evidence  that  the 
policy  in  question  was  ill-advised.  It  has  been  claimed  that 
anti-intellectuaUsm  is  one  of  the  causes  of  the  present  world- 
disorder  .^  Possibly  this  is  in  a  measure  true,  in  so  far  as  anti- 
intellectuaUsm  conduces  to  an  emphasis  on  action  for  action's 
sake.  This  we  shall  consider  presently .2  But  in  any  case  it 
cannot  be  convicted  of  ignoring  the  actual  feelings  and  in- 
terests of  mankind  in  the  name  of  a  preconceived  idea  of 
spirit  drawn  from  the  agent's  own  inner  consciousness.  In- 
strumentaHsm  is  a  consistent  expression  of  that  emphasis  on 
utility  and  humanitarianism  which  so  many  German  thinkers 
have  contemptuously  ascribed  to  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the 

French. 

2.  Experimentalism.  But  having  described  instrumen- 
tahsm  as  experimental  we  must  now  distinguish  it  from 
experimentalism  in  the  commoner  scientific  sense.  When 
the  scientist  performs  an  experiment  to  test  an  hypothesis  he 
appeals  in  the  last  analysis  to  sense-perception.  He  says, 
"If  this  hypothesis  is  true  I  ought  to  observe  such  and  such 
at  such  and  such  a  time  and  place."  The  hypothesis  is 
proved  by  its  success  in  fitting  the  facts  given  in  experience. 
The  instrumentahst  includes  this  sort  of  test,  but  this  is  not 
the   peculiar   or   distinguishing   feature   of   his   view.     His 

»  Cf.  L.  T.  Hobhouse:  The  World  in  Conflict,  p.  28  ff. 
2  Cf.  below,  p.  342. 


originality  lies  in  his  emphasis  on  the  practical  test,  on 
whether  the  hypothesis  framed  by  the  intellect  enables  the 
agent  who  employs  it  to  succeed  in  his  undertakings.  If  he 
happens  to  want  to  fit  the  facts,  why  then  an  hypothesis  that 
fits  the  facts  is  a  useful  instrument.  But  fitting  the  facts  is 
only  one  of  many  interests  that  govern  him,  and  there  are 
other  ways  of  succeeding  that  are  just  as  good  proof  of  the 
success  or  "truth  "  of  the  idea  he  uses.  One  may,  for  ex- 
ample, be  interested  in  recovering  one's  health,  or  in  ruling 
a  country.  For  such  purposes  one  uses  ideas,  and  in  so  far 
as  by  means  of  the  ideas  one's  health  is  restored,  or  one's  rule 
is  stable,  the  ideas  are  said  to  have  proved  successful,  and  so 
to  be  proved  true.  In  short  an  idea  is  true  in  so  far  as  it 
proves  a  useful  instrument  for  any  purpose,  whether  one  of 
the  special  purposes  which  we  commonly  suppose  to  actuate 
scientific  research,  or  one  of  the  purposes  characteristic  of 
what  common-sense  would  distinguish  as  "practical  life." 

Thus  instrumentalism  is  not,  like  the  more  traditional  type 
of  experimentalism,  a  protest  merely  against  verbalism, 
pedantry,  scholasticism,  or  vague  speculation  —  an  insistence 
that  only  such  hypotheses  should  be  employed  as  can  be 
tested  and  verified  by  experience.  It  is  a  protest  against  too 
narrow  an  interpretation  of  what  may  serve  as  a  test.  The 
older  scientific  positivist  would  say  that  only  sense-perception 
may  legitimately  be  so  appealed  to.  He  would  set  apart 
what  he  would  call  the  strictly  theoretical  interest,  with  its 
own  rigorous  experimental  technique.  But  the  new  instru- 
mentalist would  say  that  every  hypothesis  is  a  kind  of  policy; 
and  that  every  policy  is  a  kind  of  hypothesis.  He  would 
admit  no  difference  between  the  theoretical  and  the  practical. 
He  would  say  that  in  all  cases  in  which  the  intellect  is  called 
into  play  it  is  at  the  behest  of  some  felt  interest.  And  how 
it  eventually  affects  this  interest  together  with  the  other 
interests  with  which  it  comes  into  contact,  is  going  to  de- 
termine its  acceptabihty  and  its  durability  in  the  broad 
human  sense. 

3.  Egoistic  Instrumentalism.  But,  it  may  be  asked,  why 
should  the  truth  of  an  idea  be  defined  in  terms  of  all  of  the 


^  i 


292 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


interests  affected  by  it?  Why  may  individuals  or  groups  not 
regard  the  work  of  the  intellect  as  successful  and  acceptable 
if  it  suits  their  limited  purposes?  This  point  is  worth  con- 
sidering, for  it  raises,  I  believe,  the  most  formidable  question 
which  this  philosophy  has  to  face.  I  have  insisted  that  this 
view  is  essentially  experimental,  and  appeals  to  consequences. 
But  even  though  it  cannot  be  a  priori,  why  can  it  not  be 
egoistic?  Why  can  it  not  be  associated  with  the  principle 
of  exclusive  self-interest?  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  can;  and 
Nietzsche  affords  an  interesting  example.^  According  to  this 
thinker,  even  language  originates  in  the  need  of  controlHng 
the  flux.  Logic  and  science  are  like  the  moral  code,  in  being 
sheer  affirmations  calculated  to  enhance  the  power  of  those 
who  believe  them.  Science  gives  a  group  power  over  nature, 
as  its  code  gives  it  power  over  rival  groups. 

''To  affirm  life  means  to  affirm  lies.  Man  can  live  only  by 
virtue  of  absolutely  unmoral  modes  of  thinking."  - 

A  lie  in  this  sense  is  whatever  is  uttered  regardless  of  fact; 
and  the  unmoral  is  whatever  is  done  regardless  of  sympathy 
or  pity.  Now  in  so  far  as  a  lie  so  uttered  and  carried  into 
effect  actually  enhances  the  agent's  power,  it  is  in  the  in- 
strumentalist sense  ''true."  It  is  a  true,  that  is,  an  effective 
lie. 

"According  to  my  way  of  thinking,  'truth'  does  not  necessarily 
mean  the  opposite  of  error,  but,  in  the  most  fundamental  cases, 
merely  the  relation  of  different  errors  to  each  other ;  thus  one  error 
might  be  older,  deeper  than  another,  perhaps  altogether  ineradi- 
cable, one  without  which  organic  creatures  like  ourselves  could  not 
exist;  whereas  other  errors  might  not  tyrannize  over  us  to  that 
extent  as  conditions  of  existence,  but  when  measured  according  to 
the  standard  of  those  other  'tyrants,'  could  even  be  laid  aside  and 
'refuted.' "3 

According  to  this  view  the  truth  of  an  idea  is  proportional 
to  the  importance  of  the  interest  which  it  serves.     Within 

»  Cf.  The  Will  to  Power,  and  Vols.  XIII,  XIV  of  his  collected  works;  in  the 
Human,  All  too  Human,  he  was  as  yet  relatively  scientific  and  intellectualistic. 

2  Werke,  XIII,  102,  239.     Cf.  Vernon  Lee,  Vital  Lies,  cit.  infra,  p.  145  fif. 

3  The  Will  to  Power,  II,  p.  49. 


J 

I 


THE   REVOLT  AGAINST   REASON 


293 


the  individual  or  group  the  truest  ideas  will  be  those  which 
condition  bare  existence  itself,  and  are  therefore  indis- 
pensably necessary.  But  what  of  the  relative  truth  of  the 
ideas  held  by  conflicting  groups,  assuming  that  each  con- 
tributes to  the  power  of  its  possessor?  It  is  evident  that  on 
Nietzsche's  premises  there  can  be  but  one  answer  to  this 
question.  That  body  of  affirmations  (or  *'lies  ")  must  be 
held  most  true  which  enables  the  group  which  makes  them  to 
acquire  superior  power  and  to  lord  it  over  rival  groups.  In 
other  words  we  arrive  at  a  Darwinian  conception  of  truth, 
according  to  which  the  surviving  convictions,  the  lasting  and 
durable  convictions  are  ipso  facto  the  true  convictions. 
Science  would  become  a  national  or  group  advantage,  proved 
by  the  test  of  struggle.  Such  a  view  would  be  consistent 
with  the  bare  instrumentalist  thesis  that  truth  is  to  be  judged 
by  its  success;  and  there  would  be  no  way  of  avoiding  such 
an  outcome,  save  by  adopting  a  different  ethical  principle 
at  the  outset.  To  escape  an  egoistic  instrumentalism  it 
would  be  necessary  to  postulate  a  universalistic  ethics.  It 
would  be  necessary  quite  independently  of  the  instrumen- 
talist theory  itself,  to  insist  that  ideas  should  be  judged  in 
the  light  of  all  of  the  interests  affected,  the  interests  of  other 
persons  and  of  other  groups  to  count  equally  with  the  in- 
terests of  the  person  or  group  affirming  the  idea.  Instru- 
mentalists of  the  American  school  have  virtually  accepted 
this  larger  human  criterion  of  truth,  but  have  failed,  I  think, 
to  make  it  sufficiently  explicit;  and  in  so  far  as  this  is  the 
case  they  may  not  unfairly  be  accused  of  having  provided 
a  dangerous  weapon  for  the  very  policy  of  ruthless  self- 
assertion  to  which  they  are  by  intent  so  unqualifiedly 
opposed. 

4.  The  Instrumentalist  Interpretation  of  Nature.  It  is 
perfectly  evident  that  instrumentalism  softens  the  harsh  and 
forbidding  aspect  which  nature  wears  for  those  who  accept 
unqualifiedly  the  account  rendered  by  the  physical  science. 
Nature  is  no  longer  an  alien  world.  Its  orderly  arrangement 
is  no  longer  conceived  as  a  grim  barrier  to  human  aspirations. 
Its  necessities  are  no  longer  inexorable,  imposed  externally 


294 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


and  unfeelingly.  Nature's  teeth  are  drawn;  it  is  now  tame 
and  domesticated.  Its  order  is  to  be  accepted  because  it  is 
useful;  because  it  is  better  to  live  in  a  cosmos  than  in  chaos. 
The  living  man  is  now  regarded  as  the  formative  and  con- 
structive agency  by  which  the  dead  and  passive  world  is 
created.  If  on  a  purely  experimental  basis  life  loses  that 
definiteness  of  purpose  which  is  attributed  to  it  in  the  ideal- 
istic philosophy,  nevertheless  it  may  claim  the  future,  as  its 
own  to  make.  Instrumentalism  is  a  forward-looking  and 
progressive  philosophy,  which,  though  it  cannot  formulate 
any  final  program,  need  acknowledge  no  absolute  limit  to  the 
range  of  its  achievement.  Furthermore,  as  we  shall  see 
more  clearly  in  the  chapter  that  follows,  instrumentalism 
lends  itself  readily  to  the  rebuilding  of  those  rehgious  hopes 
which  science  appears  dt^nitely  to  shatter.  If  the  justifi- 
cation of  the  intellect  lies  not  in  its  conformity  with  an  order 
of  things  imposed  from  without,  or  from  above,  but  in  its 
fruitfulness  for  Ufe,  then  there  is  nothing  to  forbid  the  intel- 
lect from  constructing  such  a  supernatural  or  supermundane 
setting  for  Hfe  as  will  give  man  the  assurance  and  incentive 
he  needs  in  order  to  Hve  most  abundantly. 

IV.    IRRATIONALISM 

'  We  have  finally  to  recognize  that  from  certain  angles  there 
is  an  immediate  value  in  the  disparagement  of  the  in- 
tellect. There  are  many  to  whom  the  intellect  is  uncon- 
genial. It  hampers  or  discredits  them,  and  they  rejoice 
in  its  downfall,  as  envious  or  rebelUous  spirits  will  rejoice 
in  the  downfall  of  anything  that  claims  superiority  or  au- 
thority. 

A  philosophy  which  disparages  the  intellect  will,  for  ex- 
ample, inevitably  please  those  who  find  it  impossible  or  dis- 
agreeable to  think.  The  intellect  is  regarded  by  many  as 
unpleasantly  exclusive  and  undemocratic.  It  refuses  to  let 
everybody  in.  IntellectuaHsm  reserves  knowledge  for  cer- 
tain specially  quaUfied  persons.  Anti-intellectualism,  on 
the  other  hand,  opens  the  doors  wide.  In  the  place  of  diffi- 
cult processes  of  reasoning  which  only  a  few  can  hope  to 


THE  REVOLT  AGAINST  REASON 


295 


master,  it  exalts  instinct  and  passion  which  everybody  has, 
or  intuition  which  everybody  readily  thinks  he  has.  It  is 
pleasant  to  think  that  the  highest  truths  are  revealed  unto 
babes,  and  that  every  intellectual  babe  may  properly  regard 
himself  as  a  wise  man.  If  knowledge  is  given  in  what  is 
spontaneous  and  untechnical,  there  are  no  longer  masters 
and  pupils,  but  everybody  is  a  master  by  virtue  of  his  native 

innocence. 

Or  if  one  prefers  the  sense  of  belonging  to  a^  limited  cult, 
one  can  gratify  this  sense  most  easily  by  an  anti-intellectual- 
istic  metaphysics.  Professor  Lovejoy  has  pointed  out  the 
fact  that  the  Bergsonian  philosophy  enjoys  a  certain  popu- 
larity from  its  very  inarticulateness. 

^' There  is"  he  says,  "a.  yery  evident  touch  of  mystification 
about  this  philosophy;  and  the  craving  to  be  mystified  is  a  peren- 
nial human  craving,  which  it  has,  in  the  more  highly  civilized  ages, 
been  one  of  the  historic  functions  of  philosophy  to  gratify.^  What 
the  public  wants  most  from  its  philosophers  is  an  experience  of 
initiation;  what  it  is  initiated  into  is  often  a  matter  of  secondary 
importance.  Men  delight  in  being  ushered  past  the  guarded 
portal,  in  finding  themselves  in  dim  and  awful  precints  of  thought 
unknowTi  to  the  natural  man,  in  experiencing  the  hushed  moment 
of  revelation,  and  in  gazing  upon  strange  symbols  —  of  which  none 
can  tell  just  what  they  symbolize."  ^ 

■  Those  who  have  read  Bergson  will  have  been  impressed 
by  the  frequency  with  which  the  author  makes  use  of  figures 
of  speech.  Figures  of  speech  appeal  to  the  imagination, 
which  is  a  less  laborious  organ  than  the  intellect.  It  is  easier 
to  apprehend  a  series  of  vivid  pictures  created  by  a  Hterary 
master  like  Bergson  than  it  is  to  follow  a  highly  articulated 
train  of  inferences.  I  do  not  mean  that  Bergson  does  not 
think,  and  that  his  philosophy  is  not  hard;  but  only  that  by 
the  fundamental  thesis  of  his  philosophy  he  encourages  the 
reader  to  take  the  pictures  and  let  the  thinking  go.  The 
philosophical  neophyte  is  virtually  told  that  the  pictures,  or 
some  flash  of  insight  that  they  may  suggest,  provide  the 
deeper  and  more  essential  insight. 

1  A  O  Lovejoy:  " The  Practical  Tendencies  of  Bergsonism,"  p.  2. 

V 


Hi 


■\ 


296 


THE   PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


A  more  dangerous  motive  for  taking  sides  against  the  in- 
tellect is  the  motive  of  lawlessness.  Anti-intellectualism  is 
a  convenient  philosophy  for  impatient  men  of  action.  This 
is  largely  the  reason  why  the  revolutionary  Syndicalists  have 
shown  so  great  a  fondness  for  Bergson.  They  propose  to  do 
something,  and  do  not  want  to  be  restrained  by  the  necessity 
of  giving  reasons  for  it.  They  find  that  men  can  be  got  to 
act  together  when  they  will  not  think  together.  They  will 
strike  when  they  will  not  vote.  Thus,  according  to  Mr. 
Graham  Wallas, 

^'throughout  the  SyndicaKst  literature,  one  continually  comes 
upon  denunciations  of  systematic  constructive  thought,  and  refer- 
ences to  the  elan  vital  and  the  other  terms  of  Mr.  Bergson's  anti- 
intellectualist  philosophy.  'If  one  reflects  too  much  one  never 
does  anything,'  one  should  trust  the  'philosophic  de  Taction  qui 
donne  la  premiere  place  a  I'intuition.'  .  .  .  The  Syndicalists  insist 
that  feelings  and  actions  are  more  real  than  votes,  and  that  feelings 
and  actions  are  not  equal.  An  energetic  and  passionate  minority 
have,  they  say,  both  the  power  and  the  right  to  coerce  by  violence 
an  inert  and  indifferent  majority.''  ^ 

The  Syndicalist  appeals  from  discussion  to  intuition,  from 
plans  and  programs  to  the  impulsive  love  of  struggle. 

"No  more  dogmas  or  formulas;  no  more  vain  discussions  of  the 
future  society;  no  more  comprehensive  plans  of  social  organiza- 
tion; but  a  feeling  for  the  struggle,  a  feeling  which  vivifies  itself 
by  active  participation,  a  philosophy  of  action  which  gives  the  first 
place  to  intuition,  and  which  proclaims  that  the  simplest  laborer 
engaged  in  the  combat  understands  it  better  than  the  most  learned 
doctrinaire  of  all  the  schools."  ^ 

Such  a  policy  needs  no  refutation.  Since  it  is  not  based 
on  reasons  it  cannot  be  argued.  Indeed  the  most  vicious 
feature  of  deliberately  unmeasured  action  is  that  it  chooses 
the  weapon  of  force  rather  than  the  weapon  of  discussion, 
and  imposes  the  same  weapon  upon  its  opponent.     It  be- 

*  Graham  Wallas:  The  Great  Society,  p.  306.  Quotations  are  from  Grif- 
fuelhes,  Bibliotheque  du  mouvement  social,  p.  57.     Cf.  Lagardelle,  ibid.,  p.  8. 

2  Syndicalisme  et  Socialisme,  edited  by  Lagardelle,  p.  8.  Quoted  by  Bosan- 
quet,  Social  and  International  Ideals,  p.  192.    The  translation  is  mine. 


THE  REVOLT  AGAINST  REASON 


297 


hooves  philosophers  to  remember  that  the  discrediting  of  the 
intellect  aids  and  abets  not  only  lazy-mindedness  and  ob- 
scurantism, but  the  agencies  of  wilful  destruction,  which 
would  impatiently  override  all  the  inhibitions,  safeguards 
and  organized  purposefulness  of  civilization. 


JUSTIFICATION  OF  FAITH 


299 


CHAPTER  XXI 
THE  PRAGMATIC   JUSTIFICATION   OF  FAITH 

I.    THE  VOLUNTARY  CHARACTER   OF   RELIGIOUS   FAITH 

A  recent  writer  on  contemporary  tendencies,  M.  Abel  Rey, 
has  expressed  the  fear  that  the  growth  of  pragmatism  might 
by  disparaging  science  put  fresh  courage  into  the  hearts  of 
the  reactionaries. 

"The  pragmatic  interpretation  of  science,"  he  says,  "makes  it 
permissible  to  affirm  that  science  has  no  connection  with  the  truth, 
and  so  leave  the  field  open  to  other  sources  of  truth,  such  as  the 
religious,  the  metaphysical  and  the  moral."  ^ 

This  writer  cites  the  case  of  the  French  Catholic  philos- 
opher Le  Roy,  who  having  accepted  the  pragmatist  teaching 
that  science  is  a  mere  tool  or  convenience,  then  goes  on  to 
ascribe  the  higher  function  of  revealing  reality  to  the  dog- 
mas of  Christianity. 

In  other  words,  it  is  possible  to  use  pragmatism  simply  for 
the  purpose  of  getting  rid  of  the  menace  of  science,  and  then 
to  restore  to  the  old  authorities  the  claims  which  they  enjoyed 
before  the  modern  scientific  movement  discredited  them. 
But  although  a  little  pragmatism  may  be  in  this  respect  a 
dangerous  thing,  the  whole  of  pragmatism  does  not  justify 
such  fears.  In  principle  pragmatism  does  not  discriminate 
against  science.  Quite  the  contrary.  For  pragmatism 
teaches  that  the  true  is  what  is  useful  or  fruitful;  and  science 
can  certainly  meet  this  test  better  than  any  other  body  of 
knowledge  to  which  it  could  be  appHed.  Furthermore, 
pragmatism  is  opposed  to  the  a  priori  method,  and  to  the 
absolute  temper  of  mind;  and  this  opposition  science  has 
come  more  and  more  to  share,  as  it  has  become  increasingly 
experimental  and  tentative.    Authority  of  any  sort  is  re- 

*  La  Philosophie  Moderne,  p.  37. 
298 


pugnant  to  pragmatism,  whether  intellectual  or  institutional. 
So  that  the  restoration  of  the  old  dogmatisms  or  tyrannies 
would  in  no  sense  be  compatible  with  the  wide  acceptance 

of  this  philosophy.  ^ 

It  is  true,  on  the  other  hand,  that  pragmatism  does  provide 
a  new  justification  of  faith.  But  this  new  justification  is  on 
the  basis  not  of  authority  or  intellectual  proof,  but  of  that 
same  usefulness  and  fruitfulness  which  is  also  held  to  be  the 
sole  justification  of  science.  Not  only  science,  but  religion, 
too,  may  be  useful  and  fruitful,  and  in  so  far  as  it  is  so,  its 
claims  to  acceptance  are  on  a  par  with  those  of  science. 

Every  belief,  according  to  pragmatism,  is  largely  an  act  of 
will.     This  is  neither  accidental  nor  regrettable.     It  is  an 
ancient  error  to  suppose  that  beliefs  are  somehow  imposed 
upon  the  mind  by  coercive  logic.    This  is  a  form  of  preten- 
tiousness   which    distinguishes    the    intellectualists.     They 
claim  that  their  arguments  leave  the  mind  no  other  course 
but  to  accept  their  conclusions.    If  they  were  more  candid, 
says  the  pragmatist,  they  would  admit  that  they  have  con- 
sulted their  hearts  as  well  as  their  heads.     Even  their  in- 
sistence on  the  methods  of  logic  can  be  traced  to  a  ''senti- 
ment  of  rationaUty.''     This  fact  should  not  be  hidden  as 
though  there  were  something  disgraceful  about  it.     It  should 
be  openly  recognized  and  developed  into  a  method.     If  our 
beliefs  are  in  any  case  responsive  to  our  needs  and  wishes, 
then  they  should  be  made  as  perfectly  so  as  possible.    We 
should  adopt  a  frank  experimentaUsm,  and  judge  our  behefs 
by  their  value  for  Ufe.     If  we  do  so  we  shall  find  a  new  ground 
and  a  more  appropriate  test  for  religion. 

*'In  a  general  way  then,  and  on  the  whole,"  says  William  James, 
"our  abandonment  of  theological  criteria  and  our  testing  of  reUgion 
by  practical  common  sense  and  the  empirical  method  leave  it  in 
possession  of  its  towering  place  in  history.  Economically  the 
saintly  group  of  quaUties  is  indispensable  to  the  world's  welfare. 

But  it  is  evident  that  religion  cannot  be  submitted  to 
quite  the  same  experimental  test  that  is  applicable  to  our 

1  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  377. 


300 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


judgments  regarding  what  is  near  at  hand.  If  I  judge  that 
tomorrow  is  Sunday  and  arrange  my  engagements  accord- 
ingly, my  judgment  matures,  so  to  speak,  within  twenty-four 
hours,  and  I  can  soon  determine  whether  experience  is  going 
to  satisfy  it  or  not.  But  if  I  judge  that  I  am  going  to  Hve 
after  death,  or  that  human  society  will  some  day  be  per- 
fected by  the  virtue  of  democracy,  it  is  evident  that  the 
future  contingency  to  which  I  refer  is  not  going  to  confirm  or 
discredit  my  beUef  until  long  after  I,  as  this  mortal  experi- 
mentalist, have  ceased  to  exist.  My  behef  will  not  be  de- 
cisively tested  until  it  is  too  late  for  me  to  profit  by  the  result. 
Meanwhile,  if  I  am  not  to  hesitate  and  falter,  and  so  forfeit 
whatever  value  the  belief  might  contribute  to  my  life,  I  shall 
need  some  other  test  to  sustain  me  and  dispel  my  doubts. 
Such  an  immediate  test,  that  may  be  appUed  here  and  now 
even  in  the  case  of  beliefs  that  refer  to  the  remote  and  in- 
accessible future,  may  be  found,  so  the  pragma tist  tells  us, 
in  the  effect  which  the  beUef  has  upon  the  will.  This,  for 
example,  is  the  sense  in  which,  according  to  WiUiam  James, 
theism  is  proved  to  be  ^'practically  rational." 

*' Theism  always  stands  ready  with  the  most  practically  rational 
solution  it  is  possible  to  conceive.  Not  an  energy  of  our  active 
nature  to  which  it  does  not  authoritatively  appeal,  not  an  emotion 
of  which  it  does  not  normally  and  naturally  release  the  springs. 
At  a  single  stroke,  it  changes  the  dead  blank  it  of  the  world  into  a 
living  thou,  with  whom  the  whole  man  may  have  dealings."  ^ 

Ideas,  in  other  words,  are  not  only  a  means  of  fitting  con- 
duct to  future  events,  but  are  also  a  means  of  stimulating 
the  emotions  and  the  energy  of  our  active  nature.  This  is 
sometimes  spoken  of  as  the  "  dynamogenetic  "  power  of 
ideas.  When  the  future  reference  of  ideas  is  too  remote  to 
try  out,  or  even  when  there  is  no  specific  future  reference  at 
ail,  ideas  may  still  be  judged  by  their  power  to  supply  in- 
centives to  life. 

"  ^  Reflex  Action  and  Theism,"  Will  to  Believe,  p.  127.  Cf .  also  Pragmatism. 
Professor  Lovejoy  has  fairly  pointed  out  that  this  immediate  effect  upon  the 
will  may  be  felt  even  in  the  case  of  beliefs  that  have  no  future  reference  at  all. 
Cf.  his  "Pragmatism  and  Theology,"  American  Journal  of  Theology,  Vol. 
Xn  (1908). 


JUSTIFICATION  OF   FAITH 


301 


i 


We  have  repeatedly  referred  to  the  fact  that  the  modern 
science  of  rehgion  has  emphasized  the  facts  of  reUgion.  ^   De- 
tachment from  the  engrossing  claims  of  any  single  religious 
creed  has  led  the  mind  of  to-day  to  a  more  comprehensive 
and  adequate  recognition  of  religion  as  a  universal  institu- 
tion.    Conflict  of  creeds  is  thought  of  not  as  prejudicing  the 
particular  creed  to  which  we  may  happen  to  adhere,  but  as 
testifying  to  the  marvellous  richness  and  vigor  of  the  re- 
ligious life  in  humanity  at  large.     It  is  natural  that  in  an  age 
when  such  an  idea  of  religion  is  in  vogue,  men  should  be  im- 
pressed with  the  power  of  religion;  and  that  they  should 
think  of  this  power  as  moulding  individuals  and  societies  by 
biological  and  psychological  causes  quite  independent  of 
truth  or  falsity,  in  the  older  intellectual  sense.     Although 
such  distinctions  cannot  be  sharply  drawn  or  strictiy  ad- 
hered to,  it  will  prove  convenient  to  examine  first  the  claim 
that  faith  supports  the  life-preservative  impulse;  second,  the 
claim  that  it  supports  the  moral  aspirations;  third,  the  claim 
that  it  provides  certain  peculiarly  religious  incentives  and 
consolations.    I  shall  speak  of  these  as  the  biological,  the 
moral,  and  the  spiritual  justifications  of  faith. 

II.    THE   BIOLOGICAL  JUSTIFICATION   OF   FAITH 

The  basal  interest  is  the  interest  which  the  individual  or 
the  group  has  in  life  itself.  Religious  faith  is  regarded  by 
some  thinkers  of  our  time  as  reinforcing  this  interest,  and  so 
actually  conditioning  survival.  We  have  already  met  with 
an  instance  of  this  view  in  the  social  philosophy  of  Benjamin 
Kidd.^  According  to  this  writer  the  perpetuation  of  the  race, 
and  the  competitive  selection  which  constitutes  social  evo- 
lution, require  that  each  group  shall  act  as  a  unit.  The  sur- 
viving group  possesses  a  certain  toughness  of  fibre,  and 
soundness  of  health,  comparable  to  animal  vigor  and  quite 
other  than  the  more  showy  and  superficial  attainments  of 
science  and  art.  The  most  important  condition  of  this  social 
vigor  is  religion.  The  intellect  divides  and  disintegrates 
societies,  while  religion  unites  them,  and  renders  individuals 

1  Cf.  above,  pp.  141-142. 


1 


302 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


I 


wilUng  to  subordinate  themselves  to  the  group  life  and  the 
group  interest.  Religion  is  a  sort  of  social  cement;  a  re- 
latively primitive  manifestation  of  Ufe,  but  for  that  very 
reason  basal  and  indispensable.  ^    ^ 

But  a  more  recent  and  more  consciously  pragmatistic 
view  of  this  type,  is  the  explanation  of  religion  offered  by 
Ernest  Crawley  in  his  Tree  of  Life}  This  writer  tells  us  that 
*'what  we  term  'religion  '  marks  a  psychical  predisposition 
of  a  biological  character,  which  is  of  supreme  evolutionary 
importance."  2  The  analogies  which  modern  anthropology 
has  shown  to  exist  between  Christian  dogma  and  ritual,  and 
those  of  primitive  religion,  have  usually  been  supposed  to 
discredit  Christianity.  But  Mr.  Crawley  draws  just  the 
opposite  inference.  The  analogy  shows,  he  says,  that  Chris- 
tianity like  all  reUgion,  is  rooted  in  something  fundamental 
and  ineradicable,  in  a  deep-seated  ''bias  "  or  "tendency." 

*'The  analogies  from  savage  culture  show  that  religion  is  a  direct 
outcome  of  elemental  human  nature,  and  that  this  elemental 
human  nature  remains  practically  unchanged.  This  it  must 
continue  to  be  so  long  as  we  are  built  up  of  flesh  and  blood.  For 
instance,  if  a  savage  eats  the  flesh  of  a  strong  man  or  divine  person, 
and  a  modem  Christian  partakes  sacramentally  of  Christ's  body 
and  blood  under  the  forms  of  bread  and  wine,  there  is  evidently  a 
human  need  behind  both  acts  which  prompts  them  and  is  respon- 
sible for  their  similarity." ' 

Mr.  Crawley's  account  of  this  universal  human  religion 
can  be  reduced  to  three  contentions:  that  religion  deals  only 
with  what  is  "  elemental " ;  that  the  religious  emotion  is  "  that 
tone  or  quality  of  any  feeling  which  results  in  making  some- 
thing sacred";  and  that  this  sacred  elemental  thing  with 
which  religion  is  concerned  is  life  itself.* 

"Life,"  he  says  ...  "is  the  key  to  our  problem.  The  vital 
instinct,  the  feeling  of  life,  the  will  to  life,  the  instinct  to  preserve 

1  For  an  entertaining  critical  account  of  this  book,  cf.  Vernon  Lee's  Vital 
Lies,  Vol.  II,  pp.  3-60. 

2  Tree  of  Life,  p.  3. 

'  Op.  cit.,  pp.  261-262,  296. 
*  Op.  cit.,  p.  209. 


JUSTIFICATION  OF  FAITH 


303 


it  is  the  source  of,  or  rather  is  identical  with,  the  religious  impulse, 
and  is  the  origin  of  reUgion.  Amid  the  elemental  sphere  with  which 
reUgion  deals  life  is  the  central  fact,  the  paramount  concern;  upon 
life  is  concentrated  the  best  of  that  sacredness  to  which  the  sense 
of  life  gives  rise.  Sacredness  is  the  result  of  the  reUgious  impulse; 
the  feeling  of  Hfe  is  the  cause."  ^ 

In  its  more  conscious  and  elaborate  forms  religion  seeks  to 
fortify  this  feeUng  of  Ufe,  to  protect  and  enhance  life  by 
making  sacred  everything  connected  with  it,  such  as  "birth, 
puberty,  marriage,  sickness  and  death."  The  conservatism 
of  reUgion,  its  resistance  to  change,  is  due  to  the  fact  that 

"religion  affirms  not  moraUty,  nor  altruism,  nor  science,  but 
health  and  strength  of  body  and  character,  physical  and  moral 
cleanUness  and  decency,  deference  to  age,  experience  and  position, 
principles  which  are  bound  up  with  the  elemental  view  of  Ufe."  ^ 

A  new  method  of  defending  Christianity  is  afforded  by  the 
recognition  that  Christianity  "is  rooted  more  firmly  than 
other  systems  in  the  good  ground  of  human  nature,  and  that 
its  vital  principle  is  the  instinct  for  life  in  its  purest  form." 
The  decay  of  Christianity  may  then  be  regarded  as  a  sign  of 
the  working  of  "influences  which  disintegrate  vitaUty."  ^  To 
affirm  reUgion  and  to  affirm  life  are  one  and  the  same  thing.^ 

In  order  to  account  for  the  higher  moraUzing  and  spir- 
ituaUzing  powers  of  religion  it  is  necessary  for  Mr.  Crawley 
to  exploit  the  ambiguity  of  the  term  "Ufe,"  an  ambiguity  to 
which  he  himself  caUs  attention.  ReUgion  expresses  not 
only  the  purely  biological  instinct  for  bodily  survival,  but 
the  reaching  out  after  a  "fuUer  Ufe,"  the  "aspiration  toward 
a  higher  reaUty,  both  in  the  present  and  in  the  continued  life 
hereafter."  ^  If  such  an  extension  of  the  function  of  reUgion 
is  scarcely  consistent  with  this  writer's  contention  that  re- 
Ugion is  preoccupied  with  what  is  elemental,  it  constitutes 
the  central  thesis  of  those  moral  and  spiritual  justifications 
of  reUgion  to  which  we  shaU  now  turn. 

J  Op.  cit.,  p.  214. 

2  Op.  cit.,  pp.  267,  270. 

'  Op.  cit.,  pp.  261,  296. 

<  Op.  cU.f  pp.  270,  300,  301. 


I 


304 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


III.    THE   MORAL  JUSTIFICATION   OF   FAITH 

The  idea  that  religion  is  needed  to  bolster  up  the  moral 
life  is  so  common  an  idea,  and  has  appeared  in  so  many  forms, 
that  it  would  be  out  of  the  question  to  give  a  comprehensive 
exposition  of  it  here.  I  shall  confine  myself  to  a  few  m- 
stances  which  have  a  comparatively  modern  flavor.    ^ 

We  must  in  the  first  place  distinguish  the  pragmatist  idea 
from  others  with  which  it  might  easily  be  confused.  The 
pragmatist  does  not  propose  to  deduce  right  and  wrong  from 
a  preconceived  idea  of  God.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  knowing 
the  truth  of  reUgion  first,  and  then  applying  it  to  the  conduct 
of  Ufe,  as  when  one  accepts  the  Bible  as  expressing  the  will  of 
God,  and  then  uses  it  as  a  practical  guide.  The  thought  of 
the  pragmatist  moves  in  just  the  reverse  direction.  He 
starts  with  the  moral  consciousness,  and  then  finds  a  justifi- 
cation of  religion  in  its  power  to  stimulate  the  moral  con- 
sciousness. Religion  is  thought  of  as  an  act  of  sheer  faith, 
without  intellectual  proof,  and  freely  adopted  for  the  sake  of 
the  moral  incentives  it  affords. 

Kant's  conception  of  faith  stands  very  close  to  this.  In- 
deed the  only  difference  is  that  which  I  pointed  out  in  the 
last  chapter,  the  difference  between  the  a  priori  and  the  ex- 
perimental method.  Kant  would  believe  that  it  is  possible 
from  an  analysis  of  the  conception  of  duty,  to  see  that  it 
implies  a  belief  in  God,  Freedom  and  Immortality.  The 
pragmatist  would  say  that  it  is  proved  by  experience  that 
religious  faith  enables  one  to  do  one's  duty  with  greater 
earnestness  or  firmness.  The  pragmatist  would  not  seek  to 
attach  this  moral  value  exclusively  to  any  one  such  creed  as 
that  which  Kant  proposes,  but  in  the  empirical  and  tenta- 
tive spirit  which  is  so  fundamentally  characteristic  of  him, 
he  would  admit  a  variety  of  faiths,  which  prove  morally 
stimulating  to  different  individuals  and  groups,  and  in  differ- 
ent ages. 

The  pragmatist  view  is  most  closely  approached  by  the 
older  idea  that  the  only  way  men  can  be  got  to  do  their  duty 
is  by  the  hope  of  Heaven  or  the  fear  of  Hell.     This  idea  was 


JUSTIFICATION   OF   FAITH 


305 


1 

i 


I 


supposed  to  be  based  on  the  psychological  fact  that  nothing 
moves  a  man  but  self-interest.    He  can  be  persuaded  to  act 
for  the  general  happiness  only  when  it  is  made  worth  his 
while.     Such  a  defense  of  Christianity  was  equivalent  to 
saying  that  even  if  the  existence  of  a  Divine  Ruler  of  the 
world  were  not  proved  by  reason  or  revelation,^  it  would  be 
necessary  to  invent  such  an  idea  as  a  bogie  with  which  to 
terrify  the  naughty  children  of  men  into  good  behavior. 
This  idea  is  still  widely  held  both  within  and  without  the  fold 
of  Christianity.     But  it  is  no  longer  in  favor,  not  only  be- 
cause it  degrades  the  conception  of  God,  but  because  it  is  no 
longer  in  agreement  with  the  teachings  of  psychology.     Man 
is  now  conceived  to  be  quite  capable  of  love  and  generosity. 
What  he  wants  is  an  object  to  love  and  a  cause  to  serve. 
God  is  thought  of,  then,  not  as  appealing  to  the  baser  mo- 
tives, but  as  confirming  and  guaranteeing  the  higher  motives. 
The  new  and  distinctively  pragmatist  defense  of  religion 
on  moral  grounds  is  most  impressively  set  forth  in  the 
writings  of  WiUiam  James.     This  philosopher's  moral  and 
religious  beliefs  are  to  be  separately  treated  in  a  later  chapter, 
and  I  shall  here  refer  only  to  what  bears  directly  upon  the 
question  of  faith.     James  thought  of  the  moral  life  as  essen- 
tially taking  sides  with  good  against  evil,  volunteering  for 
the  great  cosmic  campaign  against  pain,  unrighteousness 
and  baseness.     Now  in  a  campaign  you  need  a  captain,  you 
need  to  know  your  enemy,  you  need  to  believe  in  victory, 
and  you  need  to  feel  a  confidence  in  your  own  power  to 
accelerate  or  retard  that  victory.     God  is  the  Captain  of  the 
forces  of  righteousness,  giving  a  personal  vividness  to  what 
would  otherwise  be  a  mere  collective  or  an  abstract  prin- 
ciple; and  through  his  might  guaranteeing  the  eventual 
triumph  of  those  whom  he  leads.     Freedom  delivers  man 
from  the  incubus  of  mechanical  nature,  gives  him  a  sense  of 
direct  responsibility,  and  above  all  acquits  God  of  com- 
plicity with  evil.    Thus  a  belief  in  a  finite  God  and  in  a 
world  of  many  independent  parts  furnishes  the  best  basis 
for  that  gospel  of  *' meliorism,"  or  progressive  betterment, 
which  according  to  James  is  the  true  intent  of  the  moral  will. 


3o6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


James's  ethics  is,  on  the  whole,  of  the  traditional  humani- 
tarian type.  But  the  principle  of  pragmatism  is  also  in- 
voked in  our  time  by  the  exponents  of  a  very  different  moral 
ideal,  for  that  gospel  of  Ufe  and  movement,  to  which  we  shall 
turn  in  the  next  chapter.  M.  Georges  Sorel,  the  leading 
philosophical  exponent  of  syndicalism  furnishes  the  most 
noteworthy  example.  This  writer  derived  his  pragmatism 
largely  from  Renan,  who  had  said  that  in  religion  men  draw 
from  themselves  whatever  illusions  they  need  for  the  fulfil- 
ment of  their  duties  and  the  accomplishment  of  their  des- 
tinies.^ In  his  Reflexions  sur  la  Violence ,  M.  Sorel  shows 
that  the  great  efforts  and  loyalties  of  mankind  are  always 
sustained  by  myths.  Thus  the  early  Christians  expected  the 
return  of  Christ,  the  end  of  the  world,  and  the  inauguration 
of  the  Kingdom  of  the  saints.  None  of  these  expectations 
was  fulfilled,  but  the  having  of  such  expectations  was  the 
great  vitaUzing  power  of  Christianity.  Similarly  the  Refor- 
mation and  the  revolution  of  1789  were  the  work  of  dreamers, 
who  without  their  dreams  would  never  have  been  capable  of 
their  sublime  devotion.  Such  dreams  or  myths  are  to  be 
regarded  not  as  predictions  of  the  future,  but  as  symbols  by 
which  present  action  is  brought  to  the  highest  pitch  of  in- 
tensity. The  same  is  the  case  according  to  M.  Sorel  with 
the  syndicahst's  idea  of  a  great  social  upheaval  and  his  hope 
of  a  new  social  era. 

"We  know,"  he  says,  "that  the  general  strike  is  precisely  as  I 
have  said,  a  myth  in  which  socialism  expresses  itself  as  a  whole,  an 
organization  of  images  capable  of  instinctively  evoking  all  the 
sentiments  appropriate  to  the  diverse  manifestations  of  the  war 
waged  by  socialism  against  modern  society.  Strikes  have  en- 
gendered in  the  proletariat  the  noblest,  the  profoundest  and  the 
most  dynamic  sentiments  of  which  it  is  capable;  the  general  strike 
groups  these  all  together  in  one  tableau,  and  by  connecting  them 
gives  to  each  its  maximum  of  intensity;  appealing  to  certain  very 
lively  memories  of  particular  conflicts,  it  gives  a  color  of  living 
intensity  to  all  the  details  of  the  composite  presented  to  con- 

^  Cf.  Renan*s  Dialogues  Philosophiques',  and  the  Preface  to  his  Feuilles 
Detachees.  For  these  references,  as  well  as  those  below  to  Sorel,  I  am  indebted 
to  Vernon  Lee,  Vital  Lies,  Vol.  II. 


JUSTIFICATION  OF  FAITH 


307 


sciousness.  We  thus  obtain  that  immediate  vision  of  socialism 
which  language  can  never  give  us  with  perfect  clearness,  and  we 
obtain  it  all  at  once  in  an  instantaneous  perception."  ^ 

In  other  words,  the  syndicalist  does  not  literally  predict 
the  general  strike  or  the  social  revolution.  He  is  not  dis- 
turbed by  the  rational  objections  that  may  be  urged  against 
them.  For  they  are  essentially  acts  of  passionate  faith 
which  are  justified  by  their  effect  upon  the  emotions  and  will 
of  those  who  adhere  to  them.  Only  such  myths  are  capable 
of  evoking  enthusiasm,  energy,  endurance,  socialized  feeling, 
heroism  and  saintliness,  which  are  to  be  regarded  as  the  high- 
est values  which  life  affords. 

IV.    THE   SPIRITUAL  JUSTIFICATION   OF  FAITH 

I.  The  Religious  Values.  Religious  faith  may,  as  we 
have  just  seen,  be  justified  by  its  reinforcing  the  moral  will. 
But  in  the  last  instance  of  this  which  I  have  cited  we  have 
already  reached  that  borderland  between  morality  and  re- 
ligion which  is  so  difficult  to  define.  The  emotional  exalta- 
tion by  which  M.  Sorel  justifies  the  program  of  social  revo- 
lution would  doubtless  be  regarded  by  many  as  already 
transcending  morality.  We  have  now  to  consider  the  view 
that  the  justification  of  faith  lies  not  in  its  being  auxiliary  to 
the  moral  life,  but  in  its  lifting  man  above  mere  moraHty  to 
those  higher  spiritual  levels  peculiar  to  religion. 

Thus  it  may  be  contended  that  the  very  virtue  of  religious 
faith  lies  in  its  transcending  the  limits  of  scientific  knowledge, 
and  in  its  impelling  the  soul  to  trust  in  the  unknown,  —  to 
leave  the  safe  ground  of  fact  for  a  more  doubtful  but  more 
glorious  life  of  adventure  and  conquest.  Faith  becomes  a 
sort  of  good  in  itself,  the  bolder  and  more  creative  attitude 
of  mind.     Thus  we  read  in  Paul  Sabatier  that 

"If  one  could  picture  the  advent  of  a  scientific  philosophy  which 
would  suddenly  make  all  dogmas  clear  and  evident,  Catholics  would 
be  heartbroken.  .  .  .  Not  that  religion  is  for  them  a  cult  of  the 
absurd  and  anti-rational,  but  that  it  must  exceed  the  content  of 

*  Reflexions  sur  la  Violence,  p.  95. 


3o8 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


present  consciousness,  of  what  may  be  verified  by  reason  or  experi- 
ment, and  must  feel  out  toward  the  future  in  order  to  quicken  it 
and  bring  it  to  birth.  It  is  the  heart  setting  forth  as  the  herald 
of  action."^ 

Or,  religious  forms  may  be  conceived  as  the  means  by 
which  men  may  be  brought  to  feel  a  mystical  sense  of  union 
with  all  their  fellows  past  and  present.  So  long  as  it  can  stir 
this  emotion  religion  will  live  on,  even  though  its  dogmas 
were  to  be  forgotten  and  its  churches  destroyed.  Thus  the 
writer  whom  I  have  just  quoted  says  of  the  burial  ritual, 

*'The  Latin  words,  dropping  upon  the  cofiin  already  at  the 
bottom  of  the  grave,  do  not  merely  envelop  in  piety  the  heavily 
falling  earth;  they  mingle  with  the  breeze  in  the  cypresses  and  with 
the  scent  of  the  flowers,  uniting  the  sorrow  of  unknown  peasants 
with  all  the  sorrows  that  the  Church  has  chanted  or  will  chant  to 
the  end  of  time."  2 

Irreligion  finds  itself  compelled  to  provide  substitutes  for 
these  consolations  of  religion,  ''somewhat  as  certain  mothers 
give  their  children  india-rubber  teats  to  suck  to  elude  their 
impatience."  But  such  attempts  show  a  failure  to  under- 
stand that  symbols  cannot  be  manufactured.  Symbols  derive 
their  power  from  a  slow  seasoning  in  which  they  have  formed 
a  thousand  threads  of  connection  with  the  mind  of  the  group. 
Hence  the  peculiar  and  indispensable  value  of  the  traditional 
religion,  and  the  justification  for  preserving  it  as  something 
which  has  acquired  a  virtue  that  cannot  be  replaced. 

A  homelier,  but  essentially  similar  argument,  is  uncon- 
sciously employed  by  "  Billy  "  Sunday  in  defending  the  wor- 
ship of  Jesus.  Men's  hearts  are  touched  and  warmed,  he 
says,  not  by  abstract  principles,  however  well-reasoned  they 
may  be,  but  by  the  image  of  a  loving  Saviour.  The  follow- 
ing is  quoted  from  an  account  of  a  sermon  on  ''Feeding  the 
Five  Thousand,"  given  in  Boston  on  December  17,  1916: 
^  "Christianity  is  the  only  sympathetic  reUgion  that  ever  came 
mto  the  worid.    Let  your  scientific  consolation  enter  a  room  where 

*  France  To-day,  p.  81. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  75-76. 


JUSTIFICATION  OF   FAITH 


309 


the  mother  has  lost  her  child.  Try  your  doctrine  of  the  survival 
of  the  fittest.  Tell  her  that  her  child  died  because  it  was  not  worth 
as  much  as  the  other  one. 

Go  to  that  dying  man.  Tell  him  to  pluck  up  courage  for  the 
future.  Use  your  transcendental  phraseology  upon  him.  Tell 
him  he  ought  to  be  confident  in  the  great-to-be,  the  everlasting- 
now,  and  the  eternal  what-is-it  and  where-is-it. 

The  world  wants  God.    It  wants  Jesus. 

Is  the  church  drawing  the  hungry  world  to  its  tables?  .  .  . 

You  are  not  saved  by  the  principle,  but  by  the  Person! 

The  reason  Christianity  stands  head  and  shoulders  above  all 
other  religions  that  have  ever  been  offered  to  the  human  race  is 
here:  Other  religions  have  preached  good  principles  and  good 
things,  but  they  have  no  Saviour  who  can  take  those  things  and 
implant  them  in  the  human  heart  and  make  them  grow!  All  other 
religions  have  been  built  around  principles,  but  the  Christian 
religion  is  built  around  a  Saviour!"  ^ 

The  preacher  is  here  frankly  advocating  Christianity,  not 
on  the  score  of  the  truth  of  its  dogmas,  as  attested  by  the 
ordinary  methods  of  science,  but  on  the  score  of  their  power 
to  console  and  to  quicken  the  human  heart.  The  idea  of 
Jesus  is  justified  as  an  emotional  balm  or  stimulant,  rather 
than  as  a  record  of  historical  or  metaphysical  fact. 

2.  Ritschlianism  and  Modernism.  There  are  at  least 
two  important  movements  in  recent  religious  philosophy  in 
which  the  pragmatic  principle  of  justification  is  consciously 
developed.  I  can  give  them  only  the  scantiest  and  most 
inadequate  treatment,  but  I  must  not  omit  them  altogether. 

The  movement  in  Protestant  theology,  inaugurated  about 
1870  by  Albrecht  Ritschl,  rests  upon  the  distinction  between 
judgments  of  fact,  such  as  concern  science,  and  judgments  of 
value.  Judgments  of  value  are  such  as  affirm  what  satisfies 
the  judge,  whether  it  exists  or  not.  To  such  judgments,  in 
this  view,  religion  should  confine  itself,  and  so  avoid  all  con- 
flict with  science.  Let  me  quote  from  a  recent  historian  of 
Christian  thought: 

*^The  basis  of  distinction  between  religious  and  scientific  knowl- 
edge is  not  to  be  sought  in  its  object.     It  is  to  be  found  in  the 

^  Reported  in  the  Boston  Evening  Transcript,  Dec.  20,  1916. 


3IO 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


subject,  in  the  difference  of  attitude  of  the  subject  toward  the 
object.  Religion  is  concerned  with  what  he  [Ritschl]  calls  Wer- 
thurtheile,  judgments  of  value,  considerations  of  our  relation  to  the 
world,  which  are  of  moment  solely  in  accordance  with  their  value 
in  awakening  feelings  of  pleasure  or  of  pain.  The  thought  of  God, 
for  example,  must  be  treated  solely  as  a  judgment  of  value.  It  is 
a  conception  which  is  of  worth  for  the  attainment  of  good,  for  our 
spiritual  peace  and  victory  over  the  world.  What  God  is  in  himself 
we  cannot  know.  .  .  .  God  is  holy  love.  That  is  a  religious  value- 
judgment.  But  what  sort  of  a  being  God  must  be  in  order  that  we 
may  assign  to  him  these  attributes,  we  cannot  say  without  leaving 
the  basis  of  experience."  ^ 

God,  in  other  words,  is  not  meant  to  be  a  representation  of 
fact,  but  an  expression  of  sentiment  and  aspiration.  Any 
specific  historical  conception  of  God  is  not  to  be  viewed  in  the 
light  of  its  correctness,  but  in  the  light  of  its  power  to  save. 
The  science  of  theology  will  be  a  study  of  the  religious  ex- 
perience, and  of  the  function  of  symbols,  in  order  to  learn 
what  images  of  the  divine  may  most  effectively  stimulate 
man's  spiritual  regeneration. 

The  modernist  movement  in  Catholic  thought  has  been 
due  to  a  desire  to  reconcile  an  acceptance  of  modern  science 
with  a  retention  of  the  organized  and  traditional  Church  as  a 
means  of  sustaining  the  religious  life.  ^*A  scrupulous 
honesty  in  admitting  the  probable  facts  of  history,"  says 
Santayana,  '^and  a  fresh  up-welling  of  mystical  experience, 
these  are  the  motives,  creditable  to  any  spiritual  man,  that 
have  made  modernists  of  so  many."  ^ 

For  English  readers  the  best  statement  of  modernism  is  to 
be  found  in  George  Tyrrell's  Christianity  at  the  Cross-Roads. 
''Religion,"  according  to  this  writer,  ''cannot  be  the  criterion 
of  scientific  truth,  nor  science  of  religious  truth.  Each  must 
be  criticised  by  its  own  principles."  The  criterion  of  religion 
is  to  be  found  in  what  the  author  terms  "the  truth  value  of 
vision."  "The  only  remedy  lies  in  a  frank  admission  of  the 
principle  of  symbolism."  ^    We  start  with  a  specific  religious 

1  E.  C.  Moore,  History  of  Christian  Thought  since  Kant,  pp.  90-91. 

2  Winds  of  Doctrine y  p.  41. 

'  Op.  cit.y  English  translation  (1910),  pp.  XV,  103,  105. 


JUSTIFICATION  OF   FAITH 


3" 


t 


need  and  then  judge  religious  ideas  by  their  power  of  satisfying 
this  need.  In  order  to  maintain  this  power,  and  to  produce 
"  the  same  level  and  degree  of  spiritual  life  and  experi- 
ence," religious  ideas  will  have  to  assume  different  forms 
appropriate  to  the  different  stages  of  human  development, 
just  as  the  individual's  religious  life  has  to  be  sustained  by 
different  symbols  as  he  advances  from  childhood  to  maturity.^ 
This  fundamental  need  is  "union  with  the  transcendent," 
or  "harmony  with  the  Divine."  This  is  "  the  instinct  of  the 
Spirit,"  partially  expressed  in  the  moral,  intellectual  and 
sesthetic  aspirations,  but  consisting  essentially  in  a  "mystical 
need  of  conscious  union  with  the  divine,"  which  only  religious 
worship  with  its  apocalyptic  vision  and  its  sacraments  can 
satisfy.  There  is  a  Spiritual  Whole  which  lives  in  us,  and 
which  "moves  us  toward  a  universal  End  or  Good."  ^ 

"■  So  far  as  we  are  freely  to  accept  and  co-operate  with  the  instmct 
of  the  Spirit,  we  must  have,  at  least,  some  symboUc  notion  of  its 
nature  and  end;  some  fiction  explanatory  of  the  movements  that 
we  experience  withm  ourselves  — a  fiction  suggested  by  them; 
verified  and  criticised  by  its  success  in  intensifying  and  enriching 
our  spirituaUty.  Such  visions  and  revelations  command  our  faith 
by  their  liberating  appeal  to  our  spiritual  need,  spirit  answering 
spirit.  They  explain  us  to  ourselves;  they  set  free  the  springs  of 
life.  Such  was  and  such  is  the  power  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus.  It 
was  a  vision  of  the  transcendent  that  fixed  a  manner  of  feeling  and 
living  whose  fruitfulness  was  simply  a  matter  of  experience."  ^ 

V.    FAITH   AND   TRUTH 

We  have  seen  that  according  to  the  pragmatist  view  re- 
ligious faith  may  be  justified  by  its  immediate  effect  upon  the 
will  and  emotions  of  the  believer.  But  what  is  the  relation 
of  faith  so  justified  to  truth  in  the  traditional  sense?  Does 
the  pragmatic  principle  imply  that  one  may  ignore  fact  alto- 
gether, and  please  oneself  in  the  matter  of  belief?  The  re- 
volt at  such  a  view  is  well  expressed  by  Jean-Christophe : 

1  Ihid.,  p.  104- 

2  Ihid.,  pp.  114.  "S- 

'  Ihid.,  pp.  210-211.    Cf.  p.  112. 


i 


312 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


**So  then,  God  will  exist  because  I  will  him  to  exist?  .  .  .  Alas! 
How  easy  life  is  to  those  who  have  no  need  to  see  the  truth,  to  those 
who  can  see  what  they  wish  to  see,  and  are  forever  forging  pleasant 
dreams  in  which  softly  to  sleep.  In  such  a  bed,  Christophe  knew 
well  that  he  would  never  sleep/ ^  ^ 

A  faith  justified  by  the  will  may,  it  would  seem,  be  justified 
by  any  will;  so  that  there  is  some  ground  for  Vernon  Lee's 
rather  cynical  suggestion  that  Father  Tyrrell's  modernism 
is  dictated  by  the  "  Will-no t-to-leave-the-church."  ^  A  fur- 
ther objection  to  pragmatic  apologetics  is  voiced  by  Mr. 
Santayana.  He  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  while  the 
religious  philosopher  himself  may  understand  that  the  dog- 
mas of  religion  are  to  be  regarded  merely  as  symbols,  the 
devout  believer  will  take  them  literally.  This  will  be  the 
case  not  only  because  the  average  believer  is  too  unsophisti- 
cated to  distinguish  nicely  between  the  literal  and  the  sym- 
bolic, but  also  because  if  he  did  not  take  them  literally  they 
would  not  have  the  desired  effect  on  his  will  and  emotions. 
One  who  regards  the  loving  Jesus  as  only  an  image  invoked 
for  the  sake  of  the  consolation  it  affords  is  not  going  to  be 
consoled.  He  must  believe  in  Jesus  as  a  historical  and  living 
fact.  The  consequence  is  that  there  must  in  this  view  be 
two  classes  of  believers,  those  who  are  disillusioned,  and 
accept  dogmas  only  pragmatically,  and  those  who  retain  the 
old  naive  convictions.  The  latter  will  be  those  in  whom  the 
regenerative  power  of  the  dogmas  actually  works.  But  for 
such  believers  religion  will  be  on  a  par  with  science,  and  will 
inevitably  be  affected  by  science.  Let  me  cite  Mr.  Santa- 
yana's  statement  of  the  matter: 

"  What  would  make  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  utterly  impossible 
would  be  the  admission  that  it  had  no  authority  to  proclaim  what 
has  happened  or  what  is  going  to  happen,  either  in  this  world  or 
in  another.  .  .  .  Accordingly,  while  it  is  quite  true  that  speculations 
about  nature  and  history  are  not  contained  explicitly  in  the  religion 
of  the  gospel,  yet  the  message  of  this  religion  is  one  which  specula- 
tions about  nature  and  reconstructions  of  history  may  extend 
congruously,  or  may  contradict  and  totally  annul.  .  .     Even  the 

*  Jean-Christophe,  p.  237. 
2  Vital  Lies,  Vol.  I,  p.  253. 


JUSTIFICATION  OF   FAITH 


313 


pagan  poets,  when  they  devised  a  myth,  half  believed  in  it  for  a 
fact.  .  .  To  divorce,  then,  as  the  modernists  do,  the  history  of 
the  world  from  the  story  of  salvation,  and  God's  government  and 
the  sanctions  of  religion  from  the  operation  of  matter,  is  a  funda- 
mental  apostasy  from  Christianity."  ^ 

Now  it  is  quite  possible  to  contend  in  a  limited  and  quali- 
fied way  that  some  religious  forms  are  freely  imaginative,  and 
are  therefore  on  a  par  with  such  symbols  as  patriotism  or  the 
sentiment  of  humanity  invoke.  In  order  that  the  state  or 
collective  mankind  may  be  objects  of  love  and  loyalty,  it  is 
necessary  to  picture  them  in  images  or  embody  them  in 
emblems.  This  is  quite  consistent  with  a  sober  recognition 
of  the  facts.  It  would  mean  that  certain  facts,  known  to  be 
such,  can  only  grip  the  emotions  when  the  imagination  makes 
them  concrete  and  vivid.  In  the  case  of  religion  this  would 
mean  that  its  dogmas  must  be  substantially  correct;  but  that 
they  may  be  colored,  enriched  and  vitalized  in  order  that 
men  may  be  moved  by  them.  In  this  way  a  partial  accept- 
ance of  the  pragmatic  principle  would  be  consistent  with  an 
entire  avoidance  of  duplicity,  and  a  full  acceptance  of  the 
results  of  science.  No  man  would  be  in  the  position  of  be- 
lieving anything  which  he  would  not  believe  if  his  eyes  were 

open. 

But  the  most  painstaking  attempt  to  reconcile  the  prag- 
matist  principle  of  faith  with  candor  and  enlightenment  is 
that  which  was  made  by  William  James.  He  finds  three 
situations  in  which  faith  may  not  only  permit  but  actually 
promote  the  knowledge  of  fact. 

The  first  of  these  situations  is  that  in  which  knowledge  of 
fact  is  insufficient.  Faith  may  here  supplement  knowledge 
without  contradicting  it,  and  without  being  confused  with  it. 
Religion  in  the  main  passes  beyond  the  limits  within  which 
thoroughly  accredited  knowledge  is  possible.  In  the  field  of 
religion  it  is  faith  or  nothing.  If  one  supposes  that  the 
choice  of  the  latter  alternative  would  be  more  intellectually 
honest,  James  replies  that  such  a  choice  is  virtually  im- 
possible.    We  are  compelled  to  believe  something.     This  is 

1  Winds  of  Doctrine,  pp.  32,  33,  34. 


314 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  second  situation  in  which  a  candid  and  enlightened  faith 
proves  necessary,  the  situation  in  which  if  we  do  not  beUeve 
as  the  will  and  emotions  dictate,  we  find  ourselves  believing 
something  else  which  is  no  better  accredited  to  the  intellect, 
and  has  not  even  the  support  of  the  will  or  emotions.  In  the 
field  of  religion  there  is  a  ''forced  option,"  as  James  terms  it. 
We  are  bound  to  believe  something,  because  the  very  absence 
of  belief  turns  out  when  it  is  applied  to  Ufe  to  be  a  sort  of 
belief.  The  man  who  does  not  beUeve  in  God,  and  who  pro- 
ceeds to  live  accordingly,  is  indistinguishable  from  the  man 
who  believes  that  there  is  no  God,  which  is  as  positive  a  be- 
lief as  the  belief  that  there  is  a  God.  If  both  beUefs  are 
equally  unsupported  by  scientific  evidence,  then  there  is  no 
injury  or  disloyalty  to  the  intellect  in  choosing  that  belief 
which  most  fruitfully  stimulates  the  will. 

Finally,  there  is  a  situation  in  which  faith  may  create  its 
own  object,  or  in  which  pragmatic  truth  is  the  cause  of  truth 
of  fact.  This  is  the  common  situation  in  which  the  will  finds 
itself  as  regards  its  own  future  achievements.  The  man  who 
believes  in  his  future  success  —  that  he  can  leap  the  chasm, 
reform  society  or  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy  —  gets 
from  the  belief  an  access  of  power  that  increases  the  measure  of 
his  achievement.  To  hesitate  and  calculate  one's  chances  too 
nicely,  to  refuse  to  act  until  success  is  scientifically  assured, 
to  be  unwilling  to  take  the  chance,  is  to  be  weak,  impotent 
and  unfit  for  the  great  things  of  Ufe.  For  the  great  things  of 
life  are  doubtful  causes,  in  which  we  must  be  guided  by  the 
proverb,  ''nothing  venture,  nothing  have." 

The  supreme  instance  of  this  is  religion.  This  is  the  Great 
Adventure.  Religion  will  be  made  true  by  virtue  of  the 
greatness  of  our  faith.  The  divine  must  be  believed  in  in 
order  that  it  may  be  achieved.  Let  me  cite  an  eloquent  ex- 
pression of  this  motive  by  a  French  Protestant  minister:: 

"Definitively,  if  I  dare  so  express  myself,  I  would  say  that  it  is 
a  mistake  to  put  the  Almightiness  of  God  at  the  beginning  instead 
of  at  the  end  of  things.  There  is  a  God  who  shall  be,  but  is  not 
yet,  manifested:  there  is  a  God  'who  comes*  according  to  the 
formula  of  the  Apocalypse.  ...  To  have  faith  in  God  is,  then,  to 


JUSTIFICATION  OF   FAITH 


31S 


will  God's  full  revelation  in  the  future.  God  is  not  yet  totally 
manifested.  And  that  is  why  it  is  not  strange  that  his^  existence 
can  be  doubted;  that  is  why  a  modern  thinker  could  write:  'God 
is  the  supreme  decision  of  the  soul.'  That  is  to  say,  we  must  will 
that  God  be;  we  must  affirm  it  with  all  the  moral  powers  of  our 
being;  all  our  faculties  must  be  accessory  to  his  advent,  allies  in 
His  cause.  To  have  faith  in  God  is  no  mere  intellectual  belief; 
it  is  an  heroic  deed,  a  personal  enlisting  in  the  service  of  truth,  of 
justice,  of  beauty,  of  love;  a  free  subordination- of  the  present  to 
the  future;  a  consecration  of  our  body,  soul  and  spirit  to  the  ideal 
which  God  pursues  in  humanity,  by  the  Son  of  Man.  Definitively, 
faith  in  God  veritably  engages  our  faith,  in  the  mystical  and  sublime 
sense  of  the  term."  ^ 

1  W.  Monod:   Aux  croyants  et  aux  athees,  Paris,  1916,  p.  5.    Quoted  by 
Sabatier,  Op.  cit.,  pp.  212-214. 


CHAPTER  XXII 
PLURALISM  AND  THE  FINITE  GOD 

The  present  vogue  of  the  term  ''pluralism  "  is  due  mainly 
to  William  Jaines.  Philosophy  has  always  emphasized  the 
difference  between  the  endless  variety  of  the  world  as  given 
to  our  senses  or  as  reflected  in  our  conflicting  interests,  and 
the  unity  of  the  world  as  revealed  in  the  great  laws  of  nature 
or  in  the  common  ideals  of  Ufe.  But  it  has  ordinarily  been 
assumed  that  the  variety  or  manyness  of  things  was  an  evil 
to  be  remedied.  Philosophy  has  commonly  regarded  itself 
as  a  means  by  which  man  might  reahze  his  legitimate  aspira- 
tion after  unity.  According  to  this  view,  things  are  many 
only  in  so  far  as  they  are  unintelligible  and  unsatisfactory; 
while  things  are  one  in  so  far  as  they  are  intelligible  and  good. 
The  originality  of  James  lies  in  his  accepting  the  manyness 
and  differences  of  the  world  as  final  and  irreducible;  and  his 
welcoming  this  manyness  and  diversity  as  the  great  redeem- 
ing feature  of  the  world.  To  borrow  the  language  of  Shelley, 
James  preferred  the  "dome  of  many  colored  glass ''  to  "the 
white  radiance  of  eternity."  A  philosopher  who  thus  pro- 
claims the  plural  character  of  the  world  now  calls  himself  a 
"pluralist,"  while  the  opposite  and  older  party  receives  the 
title  of  "monism."  The  two  great  representatives  of 
monism  in  the  last  century  were,  as  we  have  seen,  the  mate- 
rialists who  reduced  everything  to  a  single  physical  principle, 
and  the  idealists  who  subsumed  everything  under  the  Abso- 
lute. Pluralism  arose  as  a  protest  against  both  of  these 
monisms,  but  it  directed  its  attack  mainly  against  the  latter. 

The  affinity  between  pluralism  and  the  tendencies  ex- 
amined in  the  last  two  chapters  is  clear.  The  intellect  is  the 
chief  supporter  of  monism.  The  data  of  the  senses  and  of 
the  feelings  are  infinitely  diverse  and  innumerably  many. 
If  the  report  of  immediate  experience  were  to  be  accepted  as 

316 


THE   FINITE  GOD 


317 


I 
J 


final  no  one  would  ever  dream  of  attributing  unity  to  the 
world.  Even  such  identities  and  bonds  as  we  now  take  to  be 
matters  of  fact  have  been  brought  to  light  by  the  intellect; 
and  have  been  found  because  the  intellect  insisted  upon  look- 
ing for  them.  But  despite  that  aspect  of  order  which,  thanks 
to  science,  nature  now  presents  to  us,  there  still  remains  a 
vast  and  apparently  inexhaustible  residuum  of  disconnected 
and  unique  particulars.  Taking  the  world  as  we  find  it,  the 
most  that  could  be  claimed  would  be  that  there  is  a  frame  of 
order  enfolded  and  surrounded  by  a  variegated  and  nebulous 
disorder.  If  men  incline  to  the  belief  that  the  world  is  abso- 
lutely orderly  and  unified,  it  is  because  they  have  adopted 
the  bias  of  the  intellect,  and  have  allowed  this  faculty  to  con- 
ceive things  in  its  own  way,  regardless  of  appearances.  In 
other  words  monism  is  an  intellectual  ideal.  Therefore  a 
revolt  against  intellect  is  at  the  same  time,  whether  con- 
sciously or  not,  a  revolt  against  monism. 

If  intellectualism  is  monistic,  so  voluntarism,  the  emphasis 
on  will,  tends  to  be  pluralistic.  This  results  from  the  well- 
known  fact  that  in  action  a  man  asserts  himself,  his  own  desire 
or  his  own  decision;  while  in  thought  a  man  merges  himself 
with  the  impersonal  principles  or  systems  which  he  contem- 
plates. Thus  pragmatism,  both  in  its  negative  attack  upon 
intellect,  and  in  its  positive  affirmation  of  the  rights  of  will 
or  feeling,  inclines  to  pluralism  in  its  metaphysics. 

I.    THE   PRECIOUSNESS   OF   THE   INDIVIDUAL 

The  pluralist,  as  we  have  seen,  does  not  merely  accept 
manyness  and  diversity  as  a  fact,  but  he  glories  in  it.  He 
looks  to  pluralism,  in  the  first  place,  as  a  philosophy  which 
preserves  what  is  unique  in  the  particular  individual.  He 
objects  to  monism  because  it  seems  to  him  to  touch  up  the 
portrait  of  reality,  and  to  remove  all  the  moles,  wrinkles  and 
irregularities  that  give  it  character.  Or  he  likens  the  monis- 
tic view  of  the  world  to  an  artificial  cultivation  which  de- 
stroys the  native  wildness  of  things,  by  pruning  them  and 
arranging  them  in  neat  rows.  Monism  reduces  the  particu- 
lar to  the  type  or  class,  the  event  to  the  law,  the  quality  to 


3i8 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


I 


THE  FINITE  GOD 


319 


the  substance,  the  local  and  peculiar  to  the  universal,  the 
flesh  and  blood  to  the  skeleton.  By  so  doing,  it  over-simpli- 
fies, dulls  and  impoverishes  the  world. 

AppUed  to  the  case  of  man,  monism  would  reduce  the  in- 
finite variety  of  individuals  either  to  the  abstract  generic 
principle  of  human  nature,  or  to  some  single  all-enveloping 
life  like  that  of  the  absolute.  In  either  case  there  is  some- 
thing lost,  namely,  the  peculiar  and  unique  flavor  of  the 
individual  life  as  the  individual  feels  this  himself.  It  is  im- 
portant to  note  the  profound  difference  between  the  sort  of 
individualism  that  is  associated  with  pluraHsm  and  that  self- 
styled  variety  of  individualism  which  is  associated  with 
monism.  Thus  Bosanquet,  following  Hegel,  is  fond  of 
characterizing  the  fundamental  being  as  ''the  concrete  in- 
dividual.'' But  it  is  characteristic  of  this  philosophy  that 
there  should  in  the  end  be  only  one  individual,  the  Absolute. 
Practically  and  emotionally  such  a  view  is  almost  the  exact 
opposite  of  pluralistic  individualism.  It  encourages  each 
individual  to  identify  himself  with  a  larger  individual  life 
into  which  both  he  and  his  fellows  are  absorbed.  The 
"true  "  individuality  of  each  is  to  be  found,  in  this -view,  in 
what  each  contributes  to  that  larger  life;  not  in  what  is  out- 
standing, independent  or  irrelevant,  but  in  what  belongs  to 
the  common  whole.  According  to  monism  there  is  no  value 
in  any  individual  except  in  so  far  as  he  sings  his  part  in  the 
chorus,  or  plays  his  instrument  in  the  symphony.  Unless 
one  can  by  a  comprehensive  and  synthetic  apprehension 
catch  the  harmony  of  the  whole,  then  one  can  find  no  value 
whatever  in  the  activities  of  the  individual.  But  for  a 
pluralist,  the  value  of  the  individual  life  is  certain,  while  the 
value  of  the  whole  is  at  best  doubtful.  The  value  of  an  indi- 
vidual life  needs  no  further  guarantee  than  its  own  inward 
feeling.  To  apprehend  that  value,  what  is  needed  is  not  a 
distant  view  of  collective  mankind,  but  an  intimate  sym- 
pathy with  the  particular  individual. 

In  a  most  beautiful  and  characteristic  essay  entitled  "On 
a  Certain  Blindness  in  Human  Beings  "  ^  James  has  appro- 

^  Published  in  the  volume  entitled  Talks  on  Psychology  and  Life's  Ideals. 


I 


priately  quoted  from  Stevenson's  essay  on  "The  Lantern 
Bearers,"  the  school-boys  who  found  their  greatest  pleasure 
in  carrying  bull's-eye  lanterns  buttoned  secretly  under  their 
top-coats. 

''The  ground  of  a  man's  joy  is  often  hard  to  hit.  It  may  hinge 
at  times  upon  a  mere  accessory,  like  the  lantern;  it  may  reside  in 
the  mysterious  inwards  of  psychology.  ...  It  has  so  little  bond 
with  externals  .  .  .  that  it  may  even  touch  them  not,  and  the 
man's  true  life,  for  which  he  consents  to  live,  lie  altogether  in  the 
field  of  fancy.  ...  In  such  a  case  the  poetry  runs  underground. 
The  observer  (poor  soul,  with  his  documents)  is  all  abroad.  For  to 
look  at  the  man  is  but  to  court  deception.  .  .  .  The  true  realism, 
always  and  everywhere,  is  that  of  the  poets;  to  find  out  where 
the  joy  resides,  and  give  it  a  voice  far  beyond  singing."  ^ 

Pluralistic  individualism  like  that  of  James  is  to  be  sharply 
distinguished  also  from  the  individuaUsm  of  self-assertion. 
It  is  an  individualism  that  uses  the  pronouns  "we''  and 
"  thou  "  and  "  you  "  rather  than  the  pronoun  "  I."^  It  is  not 
the  individualism  of  one  who  arrogates  to  himself  the 
authority  of  the  Absolute,  and  "realizes  "  himself  regardless 
of  what  is  other  than  the  self.  Nothing  could  be  more  repug- 
nant to  pluralistic  individualism  than  that  fanatical  self-im- 
portance which  inspires  the  exponents  of  a  German  "  Kultur  " 
or  a  German  state-personaUty.  Equally  repugnant  is  the 
careless  selfishness  of  the  individual  who  is  preoccupied  by 
his  own  private  impulses  and  desires.  The  fine  quaUty  of  a 
pluralistic  individualism  expresses  itself  in  that  generosity 
of  spirit  which  rejoices  that  there  are  more  things  in  heaven 
and  earth  than  one's  personal  philosophy  had  dreamed  of. 
Such  an  individuaUsm,  as  James  writes  in  concluding  the 
essay, 

"absolutely  forbids  us  to  be  forward  in  pronouncing  on  the 
meaninglessness  of  forms  of  existence  other  than  our  own;  and  it 
commands  us  to  tolerate,  respect  and  indulge  those  whom  we  see 
harmlessly  interested  and  happy  in  their  own  ways,  however 
unintelligible  these  may  be  to  us.  Hands  off:  neither  the  whole 
of  truth  nor  the  whole  of  good  is  revealed  to  any  single  observer, 

I  Quoted  by  James,  Op.  cit.,  pp.  239-240. 


320 


JHE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


although  each  observer  gains  a  partial  superiority  of  insight  from 
the  peculiar  position  in  which  he  stands.  Even  prisons  and  sick- 
rooms have  their  special  revelations.  It  is  enough  to  ask  of  each 
of  us  that  he  should  be  faithful  to  his  own  opportunities  and  make 
the  most  of  his  own  blessings,  without  presuming  to  regulate  the 
rest  of  the  vast  field."  ^ 

In  another  essay  James  points  to  the  moral  and  social  im- 
plications of  this  individualism. 

*' There  Ues  more  than  a  mere  interest  of  curious  speculation  in 
understanding  this.  It  has  the  most  tremendous  practical  im- 
portance. ...  It  is  the  basis  of  all  our  tolerance,  social,  religious 
and  political.  The  forgetting  of  it  lies  at  the  root  of  every  stupid 
and  sanguinary  mistake  that  rulers  over  subject-peoples  make. 
The  first  thing  to  learn  in  intercourse  with  others  is  non-interfer- 
ence with  their  own  pecuUar  ways  of  being  happy,  provided  these 
ways  do  not  assume  to  interfere  by  violence  with  ours.  No  one 
has  insight  into  all  ideals.  No  one  should  presume  to  judge  them 
off-hand.  The  pretension  to  dogmatize  about  them  in  each  other 
is  the  root  of  most  human  injustices  and  cruelties,  and  the  trait  in 
human  character  most  likely  to  make  the  angels  weep."  ^ 

Nothing  could  be  more  characteristic  of  this  generous  wel- 
come of  life  in  all  its  variety  of  manifestations  than  James's 
discussion  of  the  topic  of  Human  Immortality.  In  this  essay 
the  author  answers  those  who  object  to  immortality  from  the 
fear  that  such  a  future  life  might  be  too  promiscuous.  It  is 
evident  that  James  himself  saw  some  force  in  the  objection. 
That  he  should  have  taken  the  trouble  to  discuss  it,  when  it  is 
so  rarely  expressed,  shows  that  he  felt  within  himself  a  cer- 
tain conflict  between  his  taste  and  his  affections,  between  his 
discrimination  and  his  humanity.  That  he  should  dismiss 
the  objection  and  find  room  even  in  his  conception  of  the  ideal 
life  for  an  innumerable  aggregate  of  miscellaneous  creatures, 
each  with  its  own  inward  light  and  its  own  inalienable 
preciousness,  is  evidence  of  his  possessing  an  aptitude  for 
social  democracy  that  is  very  unusual  even  where  democracy 
is  professed. 

*  Op.  cit.,  pp.  263-264. 

a  "What  Makes  Life  Significant?"    Op.  cit.,  pp.  265-266. 


THE  FINITE  GOD 


321 


In  two  of  his  earlier  essays  ^  James  discussed  the  old  ques- 
tion of  the  place  of  the  individual  in  history.  As  might  be 
expected  he  attacks  the  view  represented  by  Spencer  and  his 
followers,  according  to  which  the  great  significant  changes 
*'are  irrespective  of  persons,  and  independent  of  individual 
control";  and  he  asserts  as  his  own  view  that  such  changes 
are  due  ''to  the  accumulated  influences  of  individuals,  of 
their  examples,  their  initiatives  and  their  decisions."  2  This 
view,  while  characteristic,  is  not  peculiar  to  James  and  his 
school.  What  is  peculiar  and  distinctive  is  one  of  the  argu- 
ments with  which  he  supports  the  view.  It  is  all  a  question, 
he  says,  of  what  changes  are  significant.  And  when  it  comes 
to  that  we  have  to  appeal  to  the  feelings  of  the  individual. 
*'The  preferences  of  sentient  creatures  are  what  create  the 
importance  of  topics."  The  action  of  individuals  may  not 
appreciably  affect  the  course  of  the  planet  in  its  orbit,  or  the 
condition  of  the  crust  of  the  earth,  or  the  general  properties 
of  matter,  or  the  constitution  of  human  nature,  or  any  of  the 
common  and  normal  things.  But  within  the  narrow  field 
of  human  interests  and  affairs,  the  individual  makes  all  the 
difference.  James  quotes  a  carpenter  of  his  acquaintance  as 
saying,  ''There  is  very  little  difference  between  one  man  and 
another;  but  what  little  there  is,  is  very  important  J'  ^ 

Here  again  we  have  the  pluraUst'  s  interest  in  the  detail  of 
human  life,  in  what  we  have  come  latteriy  to  call  "the 
values,"  as  these  are  felt  in  all  their  wealth  of  variety  by  all 
the  different  interests  from  all  their  different  angles.  James's 
view  of  the  world  is  the  distributive  view,  dweUing  caressingly 
now  on  this  and  now  on  that  unique  quaUty  of  it;  as  opposed 
to  the  generalizations,  abstractions  and  syntheses  which 
achieve  unity  only  by  leaving  out  all  those  dear  and  particu- 
lar things  that  most  warm  the  hearts  of  men. 

*  "Great  Men  and  Their  Environment"  and  "The  Importance  of  the  In- 
dividual," reprinted  in  The  Will  to  Believe, 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  218. 
'  Op.  cit.,  p.  261. 

*  Op.  cit.f  pp.  256-267. 


322 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE  FINITE   GOD 


323 


II.  PLURALISM  AND  FREEDOM 

"Freedom  "  is  one  of  those  eulogistic  terms  that  in  ordi- 
nary usage  is  hopelessly  ambiguous.  It  does  not  describe 
anything,  but  expresses  desire  and  hope.  It  is  something 
that  everybody  wants,  and  to  understand  its  meaning  it  is 
necessary  to  discover  the  motives  which  prompt  men  to  want 
it.  But  these  motives  turn  out  to  be  diverse  and  even  con- 
flicting. To  some  men  freedom  means  deliverance  from 
forcible  restraint;  to  others  it  means  deliverance  from  the 
restraint  of  unseen  necessities.  To  some  it  is  deliverance 
from  authority  and  discipline;  to  others  it  is  the  acceptance 
of  authority  and  discipline  as  a  means  of  deliverance  from 
their  own  passions  and  bUnd  impulses.  To  some  it  means 
deUverance  from  the  mechanical  causes  of  nature  by  the  con- 
trol of  reason  and  purpose;  but  others  find  in  such  rational 
and  purposive  control  the  very  restraint  from  which  they 
seek  to  escape.  To  still  others,  such  as  Bergson,  freedom 
means  a  more  positive  thing,  the  will's  capacity  of  spon- 
taneous creation.  In  the  case  of  William  James,  we  shall 
find  that  there  are  two  motives  which  impel  him  to  advocate 
freedom,  and  that  he  finds  both  motives  to  be  satisfied  by  a 
pluralistic  view  of  the  universe. 

I.  Alternative  Possibilities.  In  one  of  the  most  brilliant  of 
his  essays,  entitled  "The  Dilemma  of  Determinism,''  James 
summarizes  the  sort  of  determinism  against  which  he  protests. 

**It  professes,"  he  says,  ''that  those  parts  of  the  universe  already 
laid  down  absolutely  appoint  and  decree  what  the  other  parts  shall 
be.  The  future  has  no  ambiguous  possibilities  hidden  in  its  womb: 
the  part  we  call  the  present  is  compatible  with  only  one  totality. 
Any  other  future  complement  than  the  one  fixed  from  eternity  is 
impossible.  The  whole  is  in  each  and  every  part,  and  welds  it  with 
the  rest  into  an  absolute  imity,  an  iron  block,  in  which  there  can 
be  no  equivocation  or  shadow  of  turning. 

'With  earth's  first  clay  they  did  the  last  man  knead, 
And  there  of  the  last  harvest  sowed  the  seed. 
And  the  first  morning  of  creation  wrote 
What  the  last  dawn  of  reckoning  shall  read!'"^ 

^  The  Will  to  Believe,  p.  150. 


i 


i 


Now  it  is  clear  that  in  this  sense  absolute  idealism,  for  all 
its  emphasis  on  purpose,  reason  and  spirit,  is  precisely  as 
deterministic  as  the  most  unblushing  materialism,  or  the 
most  uncompromising  Calvinism.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact 
it  was  this  "soft  determinism  "  of  the  idealists  rather  than 
the  old-fashioned  "hard  determinism"  that  James  had 
primarily  in  mind  when  he  wrote  these  words.^ 

The  first  motive  which  prompts  James  to  reject  this  view 
of  things  is  the  desire  that  the  present  will  of  man  may  make 
a  decisive  difference  to  the  subsequent  course  of  events.  It 
is  morally  imperative,  he  thinks,  that  man's  sense  of  choice 
should  be  justified.  When  I  choose  I  imagine  that  the  world 
is  awaiting  my  decision,  that  whether  the  world  shall  be  this 
or  that  hangs  in  the  balance.  If  the  act  is  already  inevitable, 
if,  the  past  or  the  ruling  purpose  of  things  being  what  it  is, 
only  one  act  is  here  and  now  possible,  then  I  am  deceived. 
And  once  undeceived  I  shall  in  the  future  attach  less  im- 
portance to  my  act  of  choice.  I  am  justified  in  regarding  my 
choice  as  crucial  and  decisive  only  provided  I  so  construe  the 
world  as  to  provide  for  genuine  alternatives  or  possibiUties. 
I  must  suppose  that  the  past  and  the  given  environment  are 
equally  compatible  with  any  one  of  several  deeds  on  my  part. 
I  must  suppose  that  with  all  other  circumstances  remaining 
the  same  the  present  act  of  my  will  alone  determines  which 
of  these  deeds  shall  occur.  It  must  be  impossible  that  any 
act  should  be  absolutely  predictable.  When  it  comes  it  must 
come  as  a  genuine  novelty,  a  contingency,  a  bolt  from  the 
blue,  a  chance  happening.  The  only  kind  of  world  which 
permits  this  is  a  world  in  which  "the  parts  have  a  certain 
amount  of  loose  play  on  one  another";  "a  world  which  be- 
longs to  a  plurality  of  semi-independent  forces,  each  one  of 
which  may  help  or  hinder,  and  be  helped  or  hindered  by,  the 
operations  of  the  rest."  ^ 

The  author  realizes  that  such  a  pluralistic  world  is  repug- 
nant to  the  intellect,  which  would  prefer  to  find  a  sufficient 
reason  for  everything  in  the  causes  and  conditions  which  sur- 

^  Ibid.,  p.  149. 

«  Ibid.,  pp.  150,  175. 


324 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


round  it.  But  if  it  is  repugnant  to  the  intellect,  it  is  the  very 
breath  of  life  for  the  will.  It  makes  the  moral  agent  an 
original  cause.  It  justifies  a  sense  of  the  gravity  of  his  de- 
cision, as  able  to  make  or  mar  reality.  It  elevates  him  to 
the  dignity  of  one  who  can  himself  in  some  measure  finally 
determine  what  manner  of  world  this  world  shall  be. 

2.  Judgment  of  Regret.  The  second  motive  which 
actuates  this  writer's  belief  in  freedom,  is  the  desire  to  justify 
"judgments  of  regret''  without  falling  into  pessimism. 
Select  any  occurrence  that  to  your  mind  epitomizes  what  is 
most  dastardly  and  contemptible,  a  brutal  wife  murder,  the 
mutilation  of  young  children,  the  rape  of  Belgium  or  the 
sinking  of  the  Lusitania.  If  you  accept  the  deterministic 
view  that  the  world  is  all  of  one  piece,  then  you  are  logically 
bound  to  say  that  the  world  as  a  whole  is  such  as  to  render 
this  hateful  thing  inevitable.  Your  healthy  moral  judgment 
prompts  you  to  say  that  the  world  would  have  been  im- 
measurably better  without  it;  but  your  deterministic  phil- 
osophy compels  you  to  admit  that  no  other  alternative  was 
possible.  At  the  moment  when  it  occurred  the  world  was 
already  irretrievably  committed  to  it.  If,  then,^  you  remain 
loyal  to  your  regret  and  resentment,  you  must  hate  the  world 
as  you  hate  that  loathsome  thing  that  is  a  necessary  part 
of  it.  This  is  pessimism.  You  may,  it  is , true,  abandon 
your  moral  judgment  and  learn  to  see  a  higher  value  in 
the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania.  You  may  say  that  without 
such  deeds  Hfe  would  lose  the  dramatic  or  spiritualizing 
value  of  tragic  conflict.    You  may  say, 

''Not  the  saint,  but  the  sinner  that  repenteth,  is  he  to  whom  the 
full  length  and  breadth,  and  height  and  depth,  of  life's  meaning  is 
revealed.  Not  the  absence  of  vice,  but  vice  there,  and  virtue 
holding  her  by  the  throat,  seems  the  ideal  human  state."  ^ 

This  is  what  James  calls  "subjectivism."  It  means  that  one 
relents,  and  instead  of  hating  vice  with  one's  whole  heart, 
welcomes  it  in  order  that  the  sinner  may  have  something  to 
repent  and  virtue  something  to  hold  by  the  throat. 

*  James,  Op.  cit.,  p.  169. 


THE  FINITE  GOD 


32s 


There  are  at  least  two  objections  to  taking  this  view  of  the 
matter.  For  one  thing,  it  sometimes  happens  that  instead 
of  repenting,  the  sinner  honors  his  misdeeds  by  commemo- 
rative medals,  and  that  vice  holds  virtue  by  the  throat.  But 
the  deeper  and  more  fatal  objection  lies  in  having  honest 
resentment  and  uncompromising  condemnation  softened 
into  moral  complaisance,  into  a  moral  "neutrality  of  thought 
and  deed."  Were  this  to  happen  virtue  would  no  longer 
take  vice  by  the  throat,  except  in  the  play  where  nobody  is 
really  hurt.  Off  the  stage,  in  real  life,  virtue  and  vice  would 
fraternize  and  greet  one  another  as  fellow-actors  of  equal 
importance  and  dignity. 

If  then  one  is  to  avoid  a  hopeless  pessimism,  or  a  corrupting 
subjectivism,  there  is  only  one  course  to  follow.  That  is  to 
abandon  utterly  the  deterministic  premise.  One  must  be- 
lieve that,  the  rest  of  the  world  remaining  the  same,  the 
Lusitania  might  have  been  spared  or  the  Belgian  child  pitied. 
Believing  in  this  possibility  there  is  now  some  sense  in  regret- 
ting that  it  was  not  realized.  In  this  aspect  the  saddest 
word  of  tongue  or  pen  is  not  "it  might  have  been,"  but  "it 
could  not  have  been  otherwise."  If  it  might  have  been,  then 
I  may  reasonably  regret  that  it  was  not,  and  I  may  reason- 
ably resolve  that  it  shall  be.  Furthermore,  I  may  now  con- 
demn what  is  damnable  without  indicting  the  whole  world. 
I  may  now  exonerate  the  innocent  and  unqualifiedly  condemn 
the  guilty.  I  may  say  "yes"  to  this,  and  "no"  to  that; 
instead  of  saying  "yes  and  no"  to  everything.  And  I 
may  take  heart.  For  I  may  now  believe  in  the  possibility 
of  uprooting  evil  without  killing  the  good.  That  is  the 
merit  of  a  pluralistic  philosophy  which  affirms  that  things 
are  separately  and  independently  rooted,  and  that  their 
connections  are  accidental  and  not  vital.  I  may  now  hope 
not  only  to  prefer  the  good  to  the  evil,  but  to  preserve 
the  good  and  banish  the  evil.  Instead  of  being  compelled 
either  to  reject  or  approve  the  mixed  and  doubtful  world  as 
it  is,  I  may  hope  for  the  eventual  achievement  of  a  world 
in  which  there  is  nothing  to  explain  away  or  apologize 
for. 


326 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


THE  FINITE  GOD 


327 


»    MeUorism.    To  this  moral  or  qualified  hope  James 
gave  the  name  of  "meliorism."     K  we  adhere  to  our  moral 
judgments  and  sentiments,  we  cannot  pronounce  the  world 
good  as  it  is.    We  must  renounce  forever  the  optimistic  be- 
Uef  that  "  all  is  for  the  best."    There  remains  the  behef  that 
suffices  for  the  man  of  action,  the  belief  that  through  his  own 
and  other  like  efforts  the  world  may  become  a  better  world. 
Such  a  view  is  not  only  pluraUstic,  but  it  is  also  temporahstic 
That  is  to  say,  it  impUes  the  reaUty  of  time.    It  implies  not 
that  time  falls  within  the  world  as  one  of  the  componente  of 
an  eternal  and  changeless  whole,  but  that  the  world  falls 
within  time,  and  suffers  radical  change.    The  past  insteado 
being  taken  up  into  eternity  and  preserved  there  as  essential 
to  its  unitary  meaning,  is  actually  left  behind.    The  evil  and 
hateful  may  be  undone,  buried  and  anmhilated     The  world 
may  be  purged  of  it,  and  made  as  though  it  had  never  been 
A  pluraUstic  universe  is  a  universe  "with  a  chance  m  it  of 
being  altogether  good."    To  the  moral  agent  it  offers  an 
opportunity  of  conquering  evil  decisively,  "by  dropping  it 
out  altogether,  throwing  it  overboard  and  getting  beyond  it 
helping  to  make  a  universe  that  shall  forget  its  very  place  and 


name. 


yy  1 


in.    THE  FINITE   GOD 


That  a  pluralistic  metaphysics  will  radically  affect  one^s 
conception  of  God  is  perfectly  evident.  We  have  already 
found  among  the  personal  ideaUsts  a  willingness  to  limit  the 
power  of  God  for  the  sake  of  preserving  his  goodness.  ^  Only 
by  supposing  that  things  happen  without  or  despite  his  will, 
is  it  possible  to  exonerate  God  of  responsibility  for  evil,  in 
the  case  of  the  personal  idealists  this  view  was  with  the 
greatest  difficulty  and  with  doubtful  success  reconciled  with 
the  monistic  trend  of  their  Kantian  premises.  But  out  and 
out  pluraUsts  like  James,  justified  by  their  radically  empirical 
professions  in  taking  things  to  be  as  many  and  as  diverse  as 
they  actually  appear  to  be,  are  confronted  with  no  logica^ 
diffiuclty.  There  is  no  theoretical  reason  why  God  should 
not  be  one  of  "the  pluraUty  of  semi-independent  forces" 

»  Pragmatism,  p.  297.  ^  Cf.  above,  pp. 


among  which  the  world  is  divided.  There  remains  only  the 
question  whether  a  God  so  conceived  can  satisfy  the  religious 
consciousness.  Without  doubt  one  of  the  motives  of  re- 
ligious worship  is  the  unstinted  attribution  to  its  object  of 
every  superlative  which  language  affords.  Thus  Hobbes 
argues  that  to  say  of  God  that  ''He  is  'finite,'  is  not  to  honor 
Him;  for  it  is  not  a  sign  of  the  will  to  honor  God,  to  attribute 
to  him  less  than  we  can;  and  finite,  is  less  than  we  can;  be- 
cause to  finite,  it  is  easy  to  add  more." 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  a  finite  God  cannot  possess  every 
perfection  at  its  maximum.  It  has  often  been  objected  with 
force  that  many  perfections  are  incompatible;  that  it  is  im- 
possible, for  example,  that  a  being  without  limits,  a  being 
coinciding  with  the  totality  of  things,  should  possess  mental 
or  moral  perfections,  since  these  seem  to  imply  a  relation  of 
the  subject  to  something  beyond  itself.  But  the  modern 
pluralist  does  not  argue  from  any  such  dialectical  considera- 
tion. He  simply  points  to  the  facts  of  evil  in  the  world,  and 
sets  this  question:  "Would  you  rather  have  an  infinite  God 
who  designed  these  evils,  or  a  finite  God  who  condemns  and 
opposes  them  as  you  do?"  In  the  last  analysis  there  is  un-  • 
doubtedly  a  conflict  between  two  religious  motives.  On  the 
one  hand  there  is  the  motive  of  dependence,  which  prompts 
man  to  exult  in  the  immeasurable  power  of  God  and  to  take 
refuge  in  it.  On  the  other  hand  there  is  the  moral  motive 
which  prompts  men  to  conceive  God  as  the  exponent  of  their 
moral  ideals  —  incomparably  greater  in  dignity,  but  governed 
by  the  same  will  which  governs  man  in  his  best  moments. 
James's  philosophy  of  reUgion  is  the  expression  of  the  second 
of  these  motives,  and  implies  a  readiness  to  sacrifice  the  first. 
This  is  not  a  religion  for  the  helpless  who  wish  to  recHne  upon 
the  bosom  of  an  Almighty  and  leave  it  all  to  his  higher  and 
inscrutable  wisdom.  It  is  a  religion  for  those  in  whom  the 
fighting  spirit  is  alive,  and  who  are  stout-hearted  enough 
to  respond  to  the  challenge  of  evil  as  to  an  enemy  to  be 
attacked  and  overcome.  It  is  a  religion  for  those  who  are 
"willing  to  take  the  universe  to  be  really  dangerous  and 

1  Leviathany  Chap.  XXXI. 


328  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

adventurous,  without  therefore  backing  out  and  crying  'no 

1  >   >>  1 

^  Even  in  those  passages  in  which  James  inclines  to  the 
^vsSal  Jew  of  a  union  with  God,  reUgion  is  made  to  spnng 
S  an  irreconcilable  moral  duaUsm  The  worshipper 
dentifies  himself  with  God,  but  it  is  the  better  part  of  him- 
ef  and  not  the  whole  which  is  thus  deified  He  feels  hi 
rJorS  will  to  be  part  of  a  greater  will  to  goodness,  a  general 
force  oTrighteouLss  at  large.  This  appears,  for  example, 
in  the  following  description  of  conversion: 

"The  individual,  so  far  as  he  suffers  from  his  wrongness  and 
criticis^  i?,  is  to  that  extent  consciously  beyond  it,  and  m  at  least 
S^to^ch  with  something  higher,  if  anything  higher  exist   .  _  . 
When  stage  two  (the  stage  of  solution  or  salvation    arrives,  the 
!l  idSes  his  real  being  with  the  germinal  higher  part  of 
SmsdJ-a^d  di  so  in  the  following  way.    He  becomes  conscrous 
tZms  hkher  part  is  conterminous  and  conttnuous  mtha  MORE 
Ttheamet<^iy,  ^hich  is  operative  in  the  universe  outstde  of  hm, 
tJdMlTcanlep  in  working  touch  mth,  and  inafashron  ge^  on 
t^arlTandsa^e  himself  when  all  his  lower  be^ng  has  gone  to  p^eces 

.  in  the  wrecks  ^  .       •     4.t, 

The  motive  of  individualism  also  finds  expression  m  the 
conception  of  the  finite  God.  Just  as  the  hunian  individual 
1st  possess  a  unique  inner  life  of  his  own  -^-ch  jmast  ^^J 
be  something  strange  and  new  to  every  one  but  himself  so 
God  also,  if  he  is  to  be  an  individual,  must  remain  outside  the 
circle  of  every  other  being.  His  privacy  must  be  respected. 
The  instinct  that  prompts  an  individuaUst  to  shrmk  from 
intrusion  upon  another  man's  life,  makes  him  shrink  from 
too  familiar  an  intimacy  even  with  God. 

"In  every  being  that  is  real  there  is  something  external  to  and 
sacred  from,  the  Jasp  of  every  other.  God's  being  is  sacred  froni 
Zr  To  co-opemte  with  his  creation  by  the  best  and  nght^t 
™e  seems  all  he  wants  of  us.  In  such  co-operation  with  hi^ 
™es  not  in  any  chimerical  speculative  conquest  of  him,  not 
LTy  theoretic  driiking  of  him  up,  must  he  the  real  meanmg  of 

our  destiny."  ^ 

1  Pragmatism,  p.  296. 

2  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  p.  508. 

8  James:  "Reflex  Action  and  Theism,"  Will  to  Believe,  p.  141. 


THE  FINITE   GOD 


329 


This  conception  of  a  finite  God,  who  is  the  great  Captain 
of  the  cause  of  righteousness  has  recently  received  a  clear  and 
impressive  presentation  by  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells  in  his  widely 
read  book  God  the  Invisible  King.  This  writer  distinguishes 
"God  the  Creator"  and  ''God  the  Redeemer'';  and  pro- 
fesses "complete  agnosticism  "  as  regards  the  former,  "entire 
faith  "  in  the  latter.^  True  religion,  he  thinks,  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  ultimate  causes  of  things,  but  only  with  the 
living  forces  now  at  work  in  the  world.  Hence  the  bank- 
ruptcy of  theistic  metaphysics  leaves  this  religion  unim- 
paired. We  may  know  nothing  of  the  universal  principle 
which  underlies  reality,  but  we  can  know  of  a  particular 
principle  that  lives  in  us  and  is  proved  by  its  fruits.  The 
adherent  of  this  new  faith  "will  admit  that  his  God  is  neither 
all-wise,  nor  all-powerful,  nor  omnipresent."  "On  the  other 
hand  he  will  assert  that  his  God  is  a  god  of  salvation,  that  he 
is  a  spirit,  a  person,  a  strongly  marked  and  knowable  per- 
sonaHty,  loving,  inspiring  and  lovable,  who  exists  or  strives 
to  exist  in  every  human  soul."  ^ 

Wells's  God  like  James's  God,  upon  whom  he  is  modelled, 
is  composed  of  "  the  best  of  all  of  us,"  but  is  at  the  same  time 
"a  Being  in  himself,  composed  of  that  but  more  than  that, 
as  a  temple  is  more  than  a  gathering  of  stones,  or  a  regiment 
is  more  than  an  accumulation  of  men."^  There  is  in  Wells's 
view  the  same  appeal  to  courage  and  action.  "God  is 
youth,"  and  "looks  not  to  our  past  but  our  future."  He 
"faces  the  blackness  of  the  Unknown  and  the  blind  joys  and 
confusions  and  cruelties  of  Ufe,  as  one  who  leads  mankind 
through  a  dark  jungle  to  a  great  conquest."  The  beUeyer 
is  "a  knight  in  God's  service,"  taking  sides  with  his  King 
against  injustice  and  disorder,  and  uniting  his  efforts  with 
those  of  all  his  fellows  in  behalf  of  "the  great  attainment," 
which  is  "  the  conquest  of  death."  God  fights  against  death 
in  every  form,  against  the  great  death  of  the  race,  against 
the  petty  death  of  indolence,  insufficiency,  baseness,  mis- 
conception and  perversion."  ^ 

»  Op.  cit.,  p.  xii.  *  Ibid.,  p.  S- 

«  Ibid.,  p.  62.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  63,  64,  96,  97,  99- 


330  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

■  The  first  to  proclaim  this  gospel  of  the  finite  God  was  John 
Stuart  MiU.  His  sober  and  restrained  exposition  of  thedoc- 
Sne  most  perfectly  reveals  its  underlying  motives  of  mdi- 
SalTsm  a^nd  marUy  courage.  It  is  an  unconscious  protes 
Tga"  double  standards,  a  carrying  over  into  rebgon  of 
the  code  of  daily  life.  Mill  calls  it  the  '-Religion  of  Duty 
Ind  he  thus  describes  it  in  the  well-known  passage  with  which 
he  concludes  his  Three  Essays  on  Religion: 

"One  elevated  feeling  this  form  of  religious  idea  admits  of, 
whichl  noToSn  to  tho'se  who  believe  in  the  omnipotenceof  the 
lod  Drinciple  in  the  universe,  the  feeling  of  helping  God -of 
Stfng  the  good  he  has  given  by  a  voluntary  c<>.operation  which 
he  ^ot  being  omnipotent,  really  needs,  and  by  which  a  somewhat 
nearer  approach  may  be  made  to  the  fum^ent  of  hi^  P^^^^^^ 
The  conditions  of  human  existence  are  highly  favorable  to  tne 
groXotS  a  feeling  inasmuch  as  a  battle  is  consumty^oing 
on   in  which  the  humblest  human  creature  is  not  incapab'e  ot 
S^Z  some  part,  between  the  powers  of  good  and  those  of  evil, 
and  in  wWch  eve;y  even  the  smallest  help  to  the  nght  side  has  its 
vafu  in  promoting  the  very  slow  and  often  almost  -sensibjeprog- 
Ls  bv  which  good  is  gradually  gammg  ground  from  evU,  yet 
ISiSit^visibly  at  considerable  intervals  as  to  promise  the  very 
Snf  bu^not  uncertain  final  victory  of  Good.    To  do  something 
JuS  Ufe  on  even  the  humblest  scale  if  nothing  more  is  withm 
S    owards  bringing  this  consummation  ever  so  Uttle  nearer, 
s  tt  molt  Smatifg  fnd  invigorating  thought  which  can  mspire 
ah™  creature;  and  that  it  is  destined,  with  or  without  super- 
nSsa^ction,  to  be  the  reUgion  of  the  Future  I  cannot  entertam 
a  doubt." 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
THE  GOSPEL  OF  ACTION  AND  MOVEMENT 

Every  man  whose  occupation  condemns  him  to  spend  most 
of  his  hours  thinking,  talking  and  writing  must  have  mo- 
ments when  he  heartily  sympathizes  with  what  a  famous 
poet  once  set  down  in  his  journal: 

"I  do  think  the  preference  of  writers  to  agents  —  the  mighty  stir 
made  about  scribbling  and  scribes,  by  themselves  and  others  —  a 
sign  of  effeminacy,  degeneracy  and  weakness.  Who  would  write, 
who  had  anything  better  to  do?  'Action  —  action  —  action'  said 
Demosthenes."  ^ 

This  love  of  action  is  in  our  day  more  than  an  occasional 
mood.  It  has  become  a  cult  and  a  religion.  In  order  to  give 
it  any  distinctness  it  is  necessary  at  the  outset  to  introduce 
certain  limiting  ideas.  It  is  evident  that  thinking,  and  even 
scribbling  is  in  some  sense  a  kind  of  action,  and  it  would  be 
fooHsh  to  preach  action  if  it  includes  everything.  Although 
what  we  feel  when  we  crave  action  cannot  be  clearly  defined, 
it  includes,  I  think,  one  or  more  of  these  three  things:  bodily 
exertion,  social  enterprise  and  visible  creation.  We  crave 
the  kind  of  action  that  involves  the  expenditure  of  energy, 
and  brings  with  it  intentness  of  interest,  fatigue  and  a  kind 
of  purge  from  subjectivity  and  brooding  doubts.  We  crave 
participation  in  the  joint  affairs  of  mankind,  an  activity  that 
takes  us  from  studies  and  cells  out  into  the  world  of  business, 
politics  and  war.  Or  we  long  to  leave  our  imprint  on  the 
world,  to  fashion  something  that  shall  express  us  and  hve 

after  us. 

But  it  may  be  justly  argued  that  action  in  all  of  these 
senses  includes  static  as  well  as  dynamic  phases.  That 
which  is  singled  out  for  emphasis  by  the  cult  we  are  here  dis- 
cussing is  not  merely  action  of  a  certain  kind,  but  it  is  the 

*  Byron,  Journal,  Nov.  24,  1813. 
331 


332 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


genuinely  active  element  of  action.  To  understand  this 
better,  let  us  see  what  different  phases  or  elements  are  in- 
volved in  a  complete  action.  There  is  in  the  first  place,  the 
phase  of  desire,  a  felt  lack,  the  sting  of  present  dissatisfac- 
tion. This  is  what  Schopenhauer  beUeved  to  be  the  essence 
of  action,  and  this  belief  was  the  ground  of  his  pessimism. 
There  is,  in  the  second  place,  the  vision  of  the  ideal.  In  so 
far  as  this  is  emphasized,  as  it  is  by  the  intellectualists,  it 
leads  to  the  cult  of  contemplation  or  quietism.  There  is,  in 
the  third  place,  the  outcome  of  action,  the  satisfaction,  the 
achievement,  the  thing  done.  In  so  far  as  this  is  emphasized 
we  have  the  common-sense  practical  or  utilitarian  view. 
There  remains  a  fourth  factor  which  our  present  cult  regards 
as  the  supreme  value  of  Ufe.  This  fourth  factor  is  movement 
from  desire  to  attainment,  the  effort,  the  change,  the  deed, 
the  performing  of  the  act.  The  fine  thing  in  action,  which 
makes  it  worth  while  and  which  should  be  heightened  and 
intensified,  is  not  the  uneasiness  of  desire,  or  the  vision  of  the 
ideal,  or  the  finished  product,  but  the  activity  which  unites 
them.  We  should  learn  to  see  in  desire  only  the  germ  of 
activity,  in  the  ideal  only  the  guide  of  activity,  and  in  the 
attainment  only  the  relic  of  an  act  that  is  past.  All  of  these 
derive  what  value  they  have  from  the  act  itself,  of  which  they 
are  only  the  necessary  conditions  and  effects. 

I.    VITALISM 

This  activist  philosophy  of  Hfe  is  associated  with  the 
present  day  emphasis  on  the  science  of  biology,  and  is  com- 
monly alhed  with  the  biological  school  that  is  known  as 
'' vitalism."  ^  According  to  this  school  the  behavior  of  living 
organisms  can  be  explained  only  by  assuming  a  unique  prin- 
ciple of  purposive  spontaneity.  According  to  the  orthodox 
teaching  represented  by  the  majority  of  biologists,  hfe  is  to 
be  regarded  as  only  a  highly  complex  mechanism,  to  be 
accounted  for  entirely  in  terms  of  simpler  physical  and  chemi- 
cal forces.     This  view  represents  the  ascendancy  of  the  ideal 

*■  The  most  prominent  representative  of  this  school  is  Hans  Driesch.  Cf. 
his  Science  and  Philosophy  of  the  Organism. 


I 


[D 


GOSPEL  OF  ACTION 


333 


of  ''exact  science."  The  only  perfected  part  of  science  is 
said  to  be  that  part  which  has  succeeded  in  formulating 
mathematical  laws,  by  which  natural  events  are  reduced  to 
quantitative  variations  of  matter  and  energy,  and  may  be 
predicted  with  measurable  exactness.  The  vitaHst,  on  the 
other  hand,  refuses  to  accept  the  hegemony  of  mathematical 
physics.  He  insists  that  in  growth  and  adaptation  there  is 
an  irreducible  factor  which  will  not  yield  to  mechanical  for- 
mulation, and  which  has  to  be  accepted  as  an  ultimate  datum. 
In  other  words,  vitaUsm  will  at  the  very  least  insist  upon  a 
duahsm  of  the  sciences,  an  abrupt  discontinuity  between 
those  which  deal  with  inorganic  phenomena  and  those  which 
deal  with  organic  phenomena.  The  philosophical  vitalist 
will  commonly  go  further,  and  assert  not  only  the  autonomy 
of  biology,  but  the  supremacy  of  biology.  He  will  find  his 
justification  for  this  in  the  idea  that  the  vital  factor  is  the 
only  real  agent  in  nature,  mechanism  being  passive  and  inert 
and  therefore  requiring  some  extra  impetus  to  make  it  go. 
The  gospel  of  action  and  movement  contains,  then,  as  a  part 
of  its  creed,  the  vitalistic  contention  that  life  cannot  be  ex- 
plained in  terms  of  anything  else,  but  rather  on  the  contrary 
itself  suppUes  the  deeper  explanation  of  the  other  parts  of 
nature. 

There  is  another  reason  for  referring  here  to  contemporary 
biological  tendencies.  When  we  think  of  the  pragmatist  or 
Bergsonian  philosophy  as  centering  in  the  conception  of 
''Hfe,"  we  must  be  careful  to  avoid  the  eulogistic  association 
of  this  term.  Otherwise  we  shall  confuse  this  philosophy 
with  idealism.  Here  again  we  can  find  our  way  only  by  re- 
membering that  the  pragmatist  tendency  is  empirical,  while 
idealism  is  a  priori.  When  the  pragmatist,  or  instrumenta- 
list, or  activist,  the  follower  of  James,  Dewey  or  Bergson, 
speaks  of  "  life  "  he  means  to  refer  to  an  observable  or  felt 
fact  of  nature  and  history.  He  means  the  attribute  of  animal 
organisms.  But  when  an  ideaUst  uses  the  term,  he  is  likely 
to  mean  some  ideal  or  perfected  activity  which  he  has  defined 
or  reached  by  inference,  and  which  he  is  disposed  to  spell  with 
a  capital  letter,  as  when  one  speaks  of  ''The  Higher  Life  "  or 


I 


334 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


**The  Life  Everlasting."  In  other  words,  the  gospel  which 
we  are  here  discussing  has  closer  affiliations  with  biological 
science  than  it  has  with  spiritualistic  metaphysics.  It  does 
promise  to  deUver  living  creatures  from  the  yoke  of  mecha- 
nism, but  it  does  not  mean  the  emancipation  of  the  spiritual 
life  from  its  bodily  forms  and  manifestations,  nor  does  it  in 
the  least  imply  that  the  world  is  grounded  in  any  perfected 
spiritual  Being. 

n.    PRACTICALISM 

Although  in  contrast  with  absolute  idealism  there  is  a 
naturalistic  and  matter  of  fact  flavor  to  this  philosophy,  we 
must  not  fall  into  the  vulgar  error  of  supposing  that  it  is  a 
mere  echo  of  the  sordid  and  mercenary  spirit  which  is  sup- 
posed to  be  a  dominant  characteristic  of  our  age.  This  is 
the  slurring,  invidious  view  of  pragmatism,  which  leads 
Englishmen  to  regard  it  as  an  American  philosophy,  French- 
men to  regard  it  as  an  Anglo-Saxon  philosophy,  Germans  to 
regard  it  as  an  Entente  philosophy,  and  MediaevaHsts  or 
Traditionalists  to  regard  it  as  a  modern  philosophy.  Thus 
a  recent  EngUsh  writer,  evidently  referring  to  James,  has 
said  that  "the  pragmatical  doctrine  that  judges  of  the  truth 
of  a  theory  by  its  results,  demands  a  moral  complacency 
perhaps  more  common  in  Boston  than  in  England."  ^  I  think 
that  anyone  familiar  with  either  the  writings  or  the  per- 
sonaHty  of  William  James  will  agree  that  it  takes  a  good  deal 
of  moral  complacency  to  accuse  him  of  having  possessed  even 
the  least  trace  of  it.  Another  writer,  a  French-speaking 
Swiss,  has  written  a  book  entitled  Anti-Pragmatisfne,  in 
which  he  identifies  the  pragmatist  philosophy  with  the  com- 
mercialism and  easy-going  democracy  of  the  Western  world.^ 

But  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  general  contention  that  ideas 
are  to  be  judged  by  their  fruitfulness  for  life  does  not  in  the 
least  determine  one's  scale  of  values.  The  most  unwordly 
of  all  questions,  the  question  in  which  the  whole  challenge  of 
religion  is  epitomized,  is  the  question:  ''What  does  it  profit  a 

1  P.  Chalmers  Mitchell:  Evolution  and  the  War,  p.  2. 

2  By  Albert  Schinz,  Paris,  1909. 


GOSPEL  OF  ACTION 


335 


I 


man  to  have  gained  the  whole  world  if  he  has  lost  his  own 
soul?  ''  ^  One  would  scarcely  deem  this  view  of  life  sordid, 
and  yet  it  is  essentially  pragmatic.  It  insists  that  the  truths 
even  of  religion  must  be  sought  because  they  are  profitable. 
But  how  profitable?  Profitable  for  what?  Evidently  the 
question  of  sordidness  or  complacency  depends  not  on  the 
doctrine  that  truth  must  be  auspicious  to  life,  but  on  what  is 
esteemed  the  best  life.  The  pragmatist  is  just  as  free  to 
define  high  standards  of  life  as  the  intellectualist  or  the 
idealist  or  anybody  else. 

But  there  is  another  consideration  which  makes  this  slurr- 
ing   interpretation    of    pragmatism    utterly    absurd.     The 
practical  man  of  the  world  is  accused,  whether  justly  or  not, 
of  being  too  prudent  and  calculating.     The  mercenary  man 
is  the  man  who  wants  to  be  paid  for  everything  he  does. 
Instead  of  finding  the  activities  of  life  glorious  or  beautiful  in 
themselves,  he  cares  only  for  the  money  or  pleasure  that  is 
to  result  from  them.     Now  this  is  not  only  different  from  that 
gospel  of  fife  and  movement  which  is  proclaimed  by  the 
pragmatist  school;  it  is  the  precise  opposite.     The  practical 
man  is  interested  in  getting  and  having;  but  the  devotee  of 
action  and  movement  is  interested  in  Uving.     Indeed,  if  he 
is  open  to  any  charge  of  moral  error,  it  is  the  charge  that  he  is 
entirely  too  bhnd  to  consequences;  that  he  is  too  little  con- 
cerned that  hfe  should  be  provident,  too  willing  that  it  should 
be  impulsive  and  blind.     The  real  weakness  in  the  gospel  of 
action  for  action's  sake  is  not  that  it  is  too  much  calculating, 
but  that  it  is  too  Uttle  purposive. 

III.    ACTION   FOR   action's   SAKE 

Even  within  the  scope  of  the  formula  of  "action  for  action's 
sake  "  there  are  still  many  different  nuances  and  distribu- 
tions of  emphasis,  among  which  I  shall  distinguish  four. 

I.  Functional  Exercise.  The  variety  of  this  view  that  is 
closest  to  biological  science  is  that  which  takes  as  its  point 
of  departure  the  native  propensities  of  the  organism.  Our 
practical  nature,  it  is  said,  consists  essentially  of  various 
specific  impulses  to  act.     The  organism  is  so  constituted  as 


336 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


to  function  in  this  way  and  that.  The  value  of  life,  it  is  said, 
lies  not  in  what  these  functions  may  result  in,  not  in  any  end 
in  which  they  come  to  rest,  but  in  their  exercise.  The  good 
thing,  for  example,  is  not  to  get  one's  breath,  but  to  breathe. 
Thus  Professor  E.  B.  Holt,  following  Freud,  terms  these 
dispositions  ^^  wishes,"  and  says  that  ethics  or  the  art  of  life 
consists  in  obtaining  their  free  and  unhampered  expression.  ^ 
Left  to  themselves  these  wishes  conflict  with  one  another,  and 
they  are  further  *' suppressed  '*  by  habit,  tradition  and  other 
forces  from  the  physical  and  social  environment.  It  is  the 
task  of  thought  to  find  ways  in  which  they  may  be  reconciled 
and  harmonized.  Mainly  owing  to  the  teachings  of  Freud 
this  view  has  exercised  a  profound  influence  upon  present 
ideas  of  mental  and  moral  hygiene.  It  has  led  men  to  re- 
gard human  unhappiness  and  morbid  depression  as  mainly 
due  to  buried  and  smothered  complexes,  which,  having  no 
proper  vent,  rankle  within  or  express  themselves  indirectly 
in  unnatural  and  distorted  forms.  Passages  need  to  be 
opened  outward,  so  that  the  organism  may  do  the  things  it 
is  made  and  predisposed  to  do.  Education  should  seek  to 
multiply  new  forms  of  expression,  instead  of  adding  to  the 
already  excessive  weight  of  repression.  Society  should  find 
for  each  individual  that  vocation  in  which  his  nature  may 
find  an  outlet. 

An  older  and  less  original  form  of  this  view  has  termed 
itself  ''energism."2  It  arose  as  a  natural  sequel  to  the  rejec- 
tion of  psychological  hedonism.  It  teaches  that  instead  of 
being  governed  by  the  expectation  of  pleasure  to  come, 
human  action  is  governed  by  the  pressure  of  impulses  that 
seek  release.  The  good  Hfe  is  the  hfe  in  which  these  latent 
energies  are  called  into  play,  as  harmoniously  and  as  abun- 
dantly as  possible. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  this  view  strongly  resembles  the  old 
Greek  view  of  the  good  hfe,  as  the  normal  and  perfect  func- 
tioning of  the  distinctively  human  capacities.  There  is  a 
certain  restraint  in  a  Hfe  so  conceived,  a  restraint  imposed  by 

*  Cf.  his  volume  entitled,  The  Freudian  Wish, 
2  Cf .  Paulsen's  System  of  Ethics, 


GOSPEL  OF  ACTION 


337 


nature.     The  good  hfe  in  this  sense  is  the  healthy  life    in 
which  impulses  are  not  only  free  but  well-ordered      E'ach 
impulse  has  its  appointed  sphere  and  its  appointed  limits 
It  is  the  acceptance  of  this  norm  of  general  organic  well-being 
that  distinguishes  the  view  from  that  which  follows. 

2.  The  Sense  of  Livmg.  One  may  construe  the*  formula 
of  action  for  action's  sake,''  as  a  kind  of  reckless  intensifi- 
cation of  ife^  In  this  case,  I  think,  it  is  not  so  much  action 
that  IS  valued,  as  the  sense  of  action.  Certain  feelings  ordi- 
nanly  accompanying  action  are  to  be  brought  to  the  hiijhest 
possible  pitch.  To  this  end  one  act  will  do  as  well  as  another 
provided  It  IS  energetic  enough.  This  exultation  in  sheer 
energy,  regardless  of  consequences,  is  typically  expressed  by 
Peer  Gynt  who  is  pursued  by  the  parish  after  having  seduced 
and  abandoned  Ingrid: 

"This  is  Hfe!    Every  limb  grows  as  strong  as  a  bear's. 
{Strikes  out  with  his  arms  and  leaps  in  the  air.) 
To  crush,  overturn,  stem  the  rush  of  the  foss' 
To  strike!    Wrench  the  fir-tree  right  up  by  the  root! 
1  his  is  Me !    This  both  hardens  and  lifts  one  high ! "  i 

It  is  this  same  emphasis  on  the  sense  of  life  that  has  in- 
spired so  much  of  recent  art.     According  to  Rodin  hfe  for  the 
artist  is^    an  infimte  enjoyment,  a  constant  ecstasy,  a  dis- 
tracted  mtoxication."     It  is  the  task  of  sculpture  to  convey 
this  sense  of  movement.     Many  post-impressionist  painters 
have  sacrificed  every  value  of  color  and  form  to  this  dynamic 
value  seeking  only  to  communicate  that  feeUng  for  the  force 
and  thrust  of  things  which  characterizes  the  painter's  own 
enjoyment  of  nature.     Indeed,  there  is  a  modern  school  of 
criticism  which  teaches  that  the  central  motive  in  all  the 
plastic  arts  is  to  stimulate  the  motor-consciousness.    Accord- 
mg  to  the  new  principle  of  empathy  {^^  Einfuhlung  ^  the 
value  of  the  work  of  art  Hes  in  its  power  of  stirring  in  the 
observer  certain  incipient  muscular  adjustments  which  are  so 

it'i^'r^"^/'  ^?  ^T^^'""  ^  ^'^''^^  ^^^^^  ^^  '' life-enhance- 
ment.        The  visual   values  are  subordinated   to   ^^  tactile 

ArZ''"''  ^'''  ^^"''  ^''  '^'  ^^^^^  ^'^'    Translation  by  WiUiam  and  Charles 


338 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


values";  that  is,  the  appeal  to  the  eye  is  only  a  means  of 
arousing  kinaesthesia,  or  the  sense  of  bodily  contact  and 
movement.^ 

3.  The  Sense  of  Power.  Between  Peer  Gynt^s  mad  im- 
pulse to  crush  and  overturn,  and  the  artist's  interest  in  so 
attuning  himself  that  he  may  vibrate  in  unison  with  the  life 
about  him,  there  is  a  wide  difference;  a  difference  so  great, 
indeed,  as  to  verge  upon  contradiction.  In  discussing  Stev- 
enson's and  James's  feeUng  for  the  preciousness  of  the  in- 
dividual, we  have  already  met  with  what  may  be  called  the 
sympathetic  or  receptive  type  of  activism.  Its  moral  ten- 
dency is  social  and  tolerant.  Of  the  opposite  type,  which  is 
egoistic  and  self-assertive,  the  most  impressive  exponent  is 
Nietzsche.  According  to  this  writer  the  sense  of  life  is  the 
sense  of  power,  the  cruel  spirit  of  Dionysus,  ^'the  joy  of  pro- 
creative  and  destructive  force,  as  unremitting  creation."  ^ 
Life  is  essentially  aggressive  and  appropriative  and  the  will 
to  power  is  therefore  its  natural  and  proper  expression.  But 
this  will  to  power  is  keenest  only  when  there  is  resistance  to 
be  overcome.  It  is  intensified  by  struggle.  Hence,  accord- 
ing to  Nietzsche,  the  sense  of  external  and  ahen  reality  is 
the  complement  of  the  sense  of  power. 

"Thus  it  is  the  highest  degrees  of  activity  which  awaken  belief  in 
regard  to  the  object,  in  regard  to  its  'reality.'  The  sensations  of 
strength,  struggle  and  resistance  convince  the  subject  that  there  is 
something  which  is  being  resisted.  .  .  .  Life  is  based  on  the  hypoth- 
esis of  a  belief  in  stable  and  regularly  recurring  things ;  the  mightier 
it  is,  the  more  vast  must  be  the  world  of  knowledge  and  the  world 
called  being."  ^ 

In  other  words,  whatever  is  outside  the  ego  exists  as  some- 
thing by  which  the  "will  to  power  "  or  to  "over-power  "  may 
be  challenged,  and  the  sense  of  mastery  enhanced. 

4.  The  Sense  of  Effort.  Nietzsche's  idea  that  the  sense 
of  power  is  intensified  by  resistance  brings  to  hght  another 

^  Cf.  B.  Berenson:   Florentine  Painters.     For  a  brief  popular  statement  of 
the  theory  of  "Empathy,"  cf.  Veraon  Lee's  The  Nature  of  the  Beautiful. 
2  The  Will  to  Power y  §  415. 
^  The  Will  to  Power,  Vol.  II,  §§  533,  552. 


GOSPEL  OF  ACTION 


339 


distinction,  if  indeed  it  is  not  a  paradox,  in  this  activistic 
cult.     The  sense  of  action  appears  to  be  inversely  propor- 
tional to  the  amount  of  action  that  actually  occurs.     In 
other  words,  when  one  is  acting  easily  and  smoothly,  in  the 
absence  of  resistance,  one  is  not  keenly  sensible  of  acting; 
one  may  even  be  quite  unconscious  that  one  is  acting  at  all. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  one  is  putting  forth  great  effort 
against  resistance,  and  is  vividly  aware  of  the  exertion  one 
is  making,  one's  action  is  in  part  obstructed  and  thwarted. 
It  is  one  thing  to  be  thoroughly  alive,  but  another  and  very 
different  thing  to  feel  very  much  aUve.     This  opposition  has 
been  brought  out  very  effectively  by  WiUiam  James  in  his 
essay  on  ''The  Gospel  of  Relaxation."     Applying  his  own 
theory  of  the  emotions,  he  emphasizes  the  large  extent  to 
which  the  feeling  of  effort  is  composed  of  sensations  of  in- 
ternal   strain   and  tension  which  are  due  to  the  fact  that 
action  finds  no  outlet.     He  advocates  spontaneity,  freedom, 
naturalness,  against  "the  American  over- tension  and  jerki- 
ness  and  breathlessness  and  intensity  and  agony  of  expres- 
sion ";  which  he  thinks  is  more  a  bad  habit  than  a  proof  of 
industry. 

*'I  suspect  that  neither  the  nature  nor  the  amount  of  our  work  is 
accountable  for  the  frequency  and  severity  of  our  breakdowns,  but 
that  their  cause  lies  rather  in  those  absurd  feelings  of  hurry  and 
having  no  time,  in  that  breathlessness  and  tension,  that  anxiety 
of  feature  and  that  solicitude  for  results,  that  lack  of  inner  harmony 
and  ease,  in  short,  by  which  with  us  the  work  is  so  apt  to  be  accom- 
panied, and  from  which  a  European  who  should  do  the  same  work 
would  nine  times  out  of  ten  be  free.  .   .   . 

''  Unclamp,  in  a  word,  your  intellectual  and  practical  machinery, 
and  let  it  run  free;  and  the  service  it  will  do  you  will  be  twice  as 
good.  .  .  .  Just  as  a  bicycle  chain  may  be  too  tight,  so  may  one's 
carefulness  and  conscientiousness  be  so  tense  as  to  hinder  the 
running  of  one's  mind."  ^ 

This  is  a  criticism  of  the  American  idea  of  hustle  and  busy- 
ness; of  the  ''bottled-lightning"  type  of  American  girl.  It 
affords  one  more  conclusive  proof  of  the  profound  ambiguity 

*  Op.  cit.,  in  Talks  on  Psychology  and  Life's  Ideals,  pp.  212,  214,  221,  222. 


340 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


which  vitiates  this  ideal  of  action  for  action^s  sake.  This 
may  mean  the  free  and  abundant  exercise  of  natural  func- 
tions, or  a  subjective  sense  of  activity.  It  may  mean  the 
reverberation  in  ourselves  of  the  life  about  us,  or  it  may 
mean  the  conquering  of  resistance.  And  from  these  different 
interpretations  spring  radically  different  moral  attitudes  or 
philosophies  of  Ufe. 

IV.    ULTIMATE   IDEALS 

The  obvious  objection  to  this  gospel  of  action  for  action's 
sake  is  that  it  affords  Ufe  no  ultimate  justification.  It 
appears  to  make  a  virtue  of  that  very  purposelessness  and 
wa>^vardntss  that  we  ordinarily  think  needs  to  be  corrected 
by  ethics  and  reUgion.  Let  us  ask,  then,  what  ultimate  ideals 
this  gospel  has  to  propose. 

I.  Heroism.  The  ideal  that  is  most  closely  connected 
with  this  gospel,  which  requires  least  in  the  way  of  meta- 
physical construction  and  support,  is  the  ideal  of  heroism. 
The  supreme  value  in  Hfe,  according  to  this  view,  is  just  to 
live  greatly.  According  to  Jean-Christophe,  all  that  is  \\ 
necessary  is  that  a  man  should  be  healthy.  He  will  then  be 
quite  content  to  play  the  man's  part,  and  let  eventuahties 
take  care  of  themselves: 

''Go  on  to  Death,  you  who  must  die!  Go  and  suffer,  you  who 
must  suffer!  You  do  not  live  to  be  happy.  You  live  to  fulfil  my 
Law.    Suffer;  die.    But  be  what  you  must  be  —  a  Man." 

In  another  passage  the  author  says  of  his  hero: 

"He  was  too  fundamentally  religious  to  think  much  about  God. 
He  lived  in  God;  he  had  no  need  to  believe  in  Him.  That  is  well 
enough  for  the  weak  and  worn,  for  those  whose  lives  are  anaemic. 
They  aspire  to  God  as  a  plant  does  to  the  sun.  The  dying  cling  to 
life.  But  he  who  bears  in  his  soul  the  sun  and  life,  what  need  has 
he  to  seek  them  outside  himself?"  ^ 

This  is  also  Carlyle's  idea,  when  he  says,  "The  chief  end 
of  life  is  not  thought  but  action.  Up!  Up!  Whatsoever 
thy  hand  findeth  to  do,  do  it  with  thy  might."     It  is  also 

1  Rolland's  Jean-Christophe,  Vol.  I,  pp.  211,  231. 


GOSPEL  OF  ACTION 


341 


Nietzsche's  meaning,  when  he  teaches  men  not  to  avoid  suffer- 
ing, but  rather  to  create  it,  both  for  themselves  and  for  others, 
as  a  condition  of  ''the  highest  Hfe,  that  of  the  conqueror."  ^ 

The  most  striking  and  powerful  manifestation  of  this  ideal 
of  heroism  is  to  be  found  in  the  SyndicaUst  movement  in 
France.  It  is  this  ideal  which  has  come  more  and  more  to 
ft  /  distinguish  the  extremists  such  as  the  "I.  W.  W."  and  the 
i  ^  Bolsheviki  from  the  moderate  sociaUsts  and  labor-unionists. 
I  do  not  mean  to  deny  that  these  extremists  arc  also  actuated 
by  baser  motives  such  as  revenge  and  plunder,  by  simpler 
motives  such  as  fear  and  necessity,  and  by  nobler  motives 
such  a*s  humanity.  But  in  so  far  as  they  idealize  their  cause, 
it  tends  to  be  less  in  terms  of  a  social  Utopia,  and  more  in 
terms  of  the  immediate  values  of  action  and  struggle.  This 
idealization  of  class  war  finds  its  most  philosophical  and  con- 
scious expression  in  Mr.  George  Sorel's  "Reflections  on 
Violence."  ^  The  violence  of  the  proletariat,  according  to 
this  writer,  is  the  only  means  by  which  "the  European  na- 
tions stupefied  by  humanitarianism  can  recover  their  ancient 
energy."  ^  What  is  needed  in  order  that  men  may  live  more 
heroically  is  a  new  soul-passion,  a  "sublime  fanaticism." 
This  Sorel  proposes  to  obtain  by  emphasizing  economic  pro- 
duction, and  by  proclaiming  that  the  only  producers  are 
those  who  participate  directly  by  the  work  of  their  hands  in 
agriculture  or  in  industry.  The  workers  who  have  hitherto 
been  despised  are  now  to  be  exalted;  the  poUticians,  the 
merchants,  the  mihtary,  the  administrators  and  the  bureau- 
crats are  to  be  regarded  as  the  parasites  of  society.  The 
"manuals"  are  to  supersede  the  "intellectuals,"  as  the 
crown  of  the  pyramid.  But  this  social  revolution  is  justified 
not  for  the  sake  of  the  new  era  that  is  to  result  from  it,  so 
much  as  for  the  sake  of  the  new  energy  with  which  this  dream 
is  to  revitalize  a  decadent  race. 

1  Nachgelassene  Werke,  Vol.  XIII,  §  226. 

2  For  an  excellent  discussion  of  the  philosophical  bearings  of  this  view,  and 
in  particular  of  the  similarity  between  Syndicalism  and  Nietzsche,  of.  G. 
Guy-Grand,  La  Philosophie  Syridicaliste,  especially  Chap.  IV. 

3  Op.  cit.,  p.  48. 


342 


THE   PRESENT   CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


*^The  proletarian  violence,"  says  Sorel,  ^'  .  .  .  carried  on  as  a 
pure  and  simple  manifestation  of  the  sentiment  of  class  war,  ap- 
pears thus  as  a  very  fine  and  very  heroic  thing;  it  is  at  the  service 
of  the  immemorial  interests  of  civiHzation.  .  .  .  Let  us  salute  the 
revolutionaries  as  the  Greeks  saluted  the  Spartan  heroes  who 
defended  Thermopylae  and  helped  to  preserve  the  civiHzation  of 
the  ancient  world.  ...  It  is  to  violence  that  Socialism  owes  those 
high  ethical  values  by  means  of  which  it  brings  salvation  to  the 
modern  world."  ^ 

It  is  customary  to  say  of  the  syndicalist  that  they  conceive 
production  too  narrowly,  overlooking  the  importance  of  the 
directing  mind  of  the  manager,  and  that  they  fail  to  see  that 
neither  their  interest  nor  any  interest  can  be  secured  without 
the  control  and  order  provided  by  government.  These 
criticisms  are  undoubtedly  just.  But  I  wish  here  rather  to 
point  out  the  conflict  between  the  particular  class-aspirations 
of  the  proletariat  and  the  general  ideal  of  the  heroic  life  which 
they  seek  to  promote.  For  if  it  is  heroism  that  is  wanted, 
that  can  be  secured  by  one  fanaticism  as  well  as  another,  by 
the  victory  of  their  enemies  as  well  as  by  their  own  victory. 
Indeed  the  supreme  opportunity  for  heroism  would  seem  to 
be  afforded  not  by  the  more  petty  war  of  classes,  but  by  the 
stupendous  war  of  nations.  The  devotee  of  heroism  ought 
logically  to  espouse  not  internationalism,  but  that  state- 
fanaticism  which  hurls  the  entire  manhood  and  resources  of 
one  society  against  those  of  another.  The  extreme  advo- 
cates of  class-struggle  belong,  then,  beside  those  very  na- 
tionalists whom  they  so  hate.  Both  would  abandon  entirely 
the  hope  of  peace,  plenty  and  happiness,  despising  such  a 
hope  as  sordid  and  unmanly.  Both  would  have  the  world 
converted  into  a  smoking  battle-ground  where  courage, 
glory  and  great  passions  spring  from  the  blood-stained  ruins 
of  the  delicately  woven  fabric  of  civilization. 

That  the  cult  of  heroism  must  equally  include  all  fanatic 
sectarians  and  partisans,  and  can  afford  no  special  justifica- 
tion to  one  above  another,  appears  in  this  eloquent  apos- 
trophe to  syndicalism  written  by  Romain  Rolland. 

1  Reflections  on  Violence,  English  translation  by  T.  E.  Hulme,  pp.  99,  295. 


GOSPEL  OF  ACTION 


343 


' 


*'Till  now  Christophe  had  only  seen  the  lowest  form  of  socialism, 
—  that  of  the  politicians  who  dangled  in  front  of  the  eyes  of  their 
famished  constituents  the  coarse  and  childish  dreams  of  Happiness, 
or  to  be  frank,  of  universal  Pleasure,  which  Science  in  the  hands  of 
Power  could,  according  to  them,  procure.  Against  such  revoltmg 
optimism  Christophe  saw  the  furious  mystic  reaction  of  the  elite 
arise  to  lead  the  Syndicates  of  the  working- classes  on  to  battle. 
It  was  a  summons  to  'war,  which  engenders  the  subHme,'  to  heroic 
war  'which  alone  can  give  the  dying  worlds  a  goal,  an  aim,  an 
ideal.'  These  greal  Revolutionaries,  spitting  out  such  'bourgeois, 
peddling,  peace-mongering,  English'  socialism,  set  up  against  it 
a  tragic  conception  of  the  universe,  'whose  law  is  antagonism,' 
since  it  lives  by  sacrifice,  perpetual  sacrifice,  eternally  renewed.  .  .  . 
If  there  was  reason  to  doubt  that  the  army,  which  these  leaders 
urged  on  to  the  assault  upon  the  old  world,  could  understand  such 
warUke  mysticism,  which  applied  both  Kant  and  Nietzsche  to 
violent  action,  nevertheless  it  was  a  stirring  sight  to  see  the  revolu- 
tionary aristocracy,  whose  bhnd  pessimism,  and  furious  desire  for 
heroic  Ufe,  and  exalted  faith  in  war  and  sacrifice,  were  Hke  the 
miUtant  reUgious  ideal  of  some  Teutonic  Order  or  the  Japanese 
Samurai.  .  .  .  Calvinists,  Jansenists,  Jacobins,  SyndicaUsts,  in  all 
there  was  the  same  spirit  of  pessimistic  ideaHsm,  struggling  against 
nature,  without  illusions  and  without  loss  of  courage:  —  the  iron 
bands  which  uphold  the  nation."  ^ 

2.  The  Universal  Life.  The  philosophy  which  we  are 
here  examining  is  as  a  rule  pluralistic.  It  either  encourages 
a  defiant  assertion  of  self  or  of  one's  own  class  or  party  against 
all-comers,  or  it  recognizes  the  specific  and  irreducible  value 
of  each  unit  of  life,  the  other  life  no  less  than  one's  own.  But 
there  are  traces  here  and  there  of  a  monistic  trend.  For 
after  all,  life  is  life.  If  there  is  no  single  all-embracing  unit 
of  life,  there  is  at  any  rate  the  common  quality  of  life,  which 
begets  a  sense  of  kinship  in  all  living  creatures.  Thus,  ac- 
cording to  the  French  philosopher  Guyau,  life  is  essentially 
expansive,  not  in  Nietzsche's  sense  of  superseding  or  appro- 
priating, but  in  the  sense  of  sympathetic  accord.  Life  tends 
to  be  loyal  to  life,  to  live  with  rather  than  against.  Accord- 
ing to  Fouillee,  Guyau's  disciple  and  interpreter, 

1  Jean-Christophe  in  Paris,  pp.  331,  332. 


344 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


*'The  dominant  idea  developed  by  Guyau  and  followed  in  its 
main  consequences  is  that  of  life,  as  the  common  principle  of 
art,  morality  and  religion.  According  to  him  —  and  this  is  the 
generative  conception  of  his  whole  system  —  life  rightly  under- 
stood, involves,  in  its  very  intensity,  a  principle  of  natural  expan- 
sion,  fecundity  and  generosity.  From  this  he  draws  the  inference 
that  normal  Ufe  naturally  reconciles,  in  itself,  the  individual  and 
the  social  points  of  view."  ^ 

In  the  writings  of  Rolland,  to  whom  I  have  already  so  fre- 
quently  alluded,  this  sense  of  the  common  life  reaches  the 
level  of  religious  rapture.     He  says  of  his  hero, 

^'The  stoic  principles  of  life,  to  w^hich  he  had  hitherto  delighted 
to  bend  his  will,  morality,  duty,  now  seemed  to  him  to  have  no 
truth  nor  reason.  Their  jealous  despotism  was  smashed  against 
Nature.  Human  nature,  healthy,  strong,  free,  that  alone  was 
virtue;  to  hell  with  all  the  rest  J  It  provoked  pitying  laughter  to 
see  the  little  peddling  rules  of  prudence  and  policy  which  the  world 
adorns  with  the  name  of  morahty,  while  it  pretends  to  inclose  all 
life  within  them.  A  preposterous  mole-hill,  an  ant-like  people! 
Life  sees  to  it  that  they  are  brought  to  reason.  Life  does  but  pass, 
and  all  is  swept  away."  ^ 

This  sense  of  a  great  cosmic  flood  of  life  in  which  the  in- 
dividual is  engulfed,  reaches  its  highest  intensity  in  the  mysti- 
cal experience.  The  following  passage  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  descriptions  of  religious  ecstasy  which  literature 
affords: 

^'That  evening,  Jean-Christophe  was  sunk  in  an  exhausted 
torpor.  The  whole  house  was  asleep.  His  window  was  open. 
Not  a  breath  came  up  from  the  yard.  Thick  clouds  filled  the  sky. 
Christophe  mechanically  watched  the  candle  burn  away  at  the 
bottom  of  the  candlestick.  He  could  not  go  to  bed.  He  had  no 
thought  of  anything.  He  felt  the  void  growing,  growing  from 
moment  to  moment.  He  tried  not  to  see  the  abyss  that  drew  him 
to  its  brink:  and  in  spite  of  himself  he  leaned  over  and  his  eyes 
gazed  into  the  depths  of  the  night.  In  the  void,  chaos  was  stir- 
ring, and  faint  sounds  came  from  the  darkness.  Agony  filled  him: 
a  shiver  ran   down  his  spine:    his  skin  tingled:  he  clutched  the 

^  Alfred  Fouillee,  Pages  choisies  de  J .  M.  Guyau  (1895),  Introduction,  p.  vii. 
2  Jean-Christophe,  p.  256. 


\ 


GOSPEL  OF  ACTION 


345 


table  so  as  not  to  fall.     Convulsively  he  awaited  nameless  things, 
a  miracle,  a  God.  .  .  . 

''Suddenly,  like  an  opened  sluice,  in  the  yard  behind  him,  a 
deluge  of  water,  a  heavy  rain,  large  drops,  down  pouring,  fell.  The 
still  air  quivered.  The  dry,  hard  soil  rang  out  Hke  a  bell.  And 
the  vast  scent  of  the  earth,  burning,  warm  as  that  of  an  animal,  the 
smell  of  the  flowers,  fruit  and  amorous  flesh  arose  in  a  spasm  of 
fury  and  pleasure.  Christophe,  under  illusion,  at  fullest  stretch, 
shook.  He  trembled.  .  .  .  The  veil  was  rent.  He  was  blinded. 
By  a  flash  of  lightning,  he  saw,  in  the  depths  of  the  night,  he  saw  — 
he  was  God.  God  was  in  himself ;  He  burst  the  ceiling  of  the  room, 
the  walls  of  the  house;  He  cracked  the  very  bounds  of  existence. 
He  filled  the  sky,  the  universe,  space.  The  world  coursed  through 
Him,  like  a  cataract.  In  the  horror  and  ecstasy  of  that  cataclysm, 
Christophe  fell  too,  swept  along  by  the  whirlwind  which  brushed 
away  and  crushed  like  straw^s  the  laws  of  nature.  He  was  breath- 
less: he  was  drunk  with  the  swift  hurtling  down  into  God  .  .  .  God 
abyss!  God-gulf!  Fire  of  Being!  Hurricane  of  life !  Madness  of  liv- 
ing—  aimless,  uncontrolled,  beyond  reason,  for  the  fury  of  Uving!"  ^ 

3.  Forward  Movement.  But  the  ultimate  hope  that  is 
most  characteristically  associated  with  this  gospel  of  action 
is  the  hope  of  progress.  It  is  characteristic  of  life  that  it 
should  go  on  and  mount  higher.  To  the  sense  of  life  is  thus 
added  the  sense  of  a  great  onward  march  that  is  gathering 
volume  and  momentum  as  it  goes. 

The  value  of  religion,  in  this  view,  lies  in  its  stimulating 
not  contentiousness,  but  a  militant  devotion.  *' Faith,  rep- 
resentation of  an  ideal,  and  enthusiasm  —  these  are  the  three 
conditions  of  human  action,"  says  Boutroux;  ^'do  not  these 
three  words  express  accurately  the  form  that  will,  intellect 
and  feeling  take  under  religious  influence?  '^  ^  Guyau,  who 
regards  his  view  as  irreligious,  in  the  old  sense,  because  he 
can  no  longer  accept  a  personal  God,  nevertheless  finds  some- 
thing divine  in  life's  reference  to  the  future,  its  power  to  move 
forward  under  the  light  of  its  own  ideals. 

"If  the  love  of  the  personal  God,  mystically  conceived,  tends  to 
be  effaced  in  modem  societies,  it  is  not  thus  with  the  love  of  the 

1  Ihid.,  pp.  252-253. 

2  E.  Boutroux:  Science  and  Religion,  p.  28. 


346 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


God-ideal  conceived  as  a  practical  type  of  action.  The  ideal  does 
not  indeed  oppose  the  world,  but  simply  surpasses  it:  it  is  at 
bottom  identical  with  our  thought  itself  which,  while  springing  out 
of  nature,  goes  before  it,  foreseeing  and  preparing  perpetual 
progress.  The  real  and  ideal  are  reconciled  in  life;  for  life,  as  a 
whole,  both  is  and  becomes.    Whoever  says  Ufe,  says  evolution.''  ^ 

Unquestionably  this  faith  in  progress  is  open  to  serious 
objection.  There  is  no  guarantee  whatever  that  a  perpetual 
movement,  even  if  it  be  a  continuous  movement,  and  even  a 
forward  movement  in  the  sense  of  prolonging  a  line  already 
marked,  shall  be  a  movement  from  good  to  better.  There 
is  a  story  of  a  negro  who  had  inadvertently  broken  into  a 
wasp's  nest.  As  he  was  rushing  headlong  down  the  road  he 
was  stopped  by  a  white  man,  and  asked  where  he  was  going. 
He  replied,  "  I  ain't  goin'  nowhere,  boss.  I'se  just  leavin'  the 
place  where  I  was  at."  It  is  doubtful  if  there  is  any  differ- 
ence in  principle  between  this  explanation  and  such  an  ideal- 
ization of  sheer  movement  as  appears,  for  example,  in  the 
following  creed,  enunciated  by  Carriere,  the  religious  painter: 

"I  know  now  that  Ufe  is  a  succession  of  efforts  continued,  later 
on,  by  others.  This  idea  gives  me  courage,  since  it  leaves  every- 
thing at  work  and  in  action;  for  only  the  thought  of  coming  to  an 
end  is  sad."  ^ 

In  a  recent  volume  representing  the  instrumentalist  school 
of  Dewey,  and  significantly  entitled  Creative  Intelligence, 
we  are  told  that  it  is  the  function  of  intelligence  not  to 
measure  and  compose  policies  in  terms  of  present  human  in- 
terests, but  to  construct  new  ideals  to  which  life  may  per- 
petually redirect  its  energies.  Life  is  not  so  much  an  ad- 
vance toward  a  goal  already  set  as  it  is  an  achievement  of 
new  goals.     Thus  Professor  Tufts  tells  us  that: 

''Moral  progress  involves  both  the  formation  of  better  ideals  and 
the  adoption  of  such  ideals  as  actual  standards  and  guides  of  life. 
If  our  view  is  correct  we  can  construct  better  ideals  neither  by 
logical  deduction  nor  solely  by  insight  into  the  nature  of  things  — 

^  Guyau:  Irreligion  de  Vavenir,  p.  169  fif. 

2  Eugene  Carriere:  Ecrits  et  lettres  choisies  d'E.  Carriere,  p.  30.  Quoted 
by  Sabatier,  op.  cii.,  p.  137. 


GOSPEL  OF  ACTION 


347 


if  by  this  we  mean  things  as  they  are.  We  must  rather  take  as  our 
starting-point  the  conviction  that  moral  Hfe  is  a  process  involving 
physical  hfe,  social  intercourse,  measuring  and  constructive  in- 
telligence. We  shall  endeavor  to  further  each  of  these  factors 
with  the  conviction  that  thus  we  are  most  Ukely  to  reconstruct  our 
standards  and  find  a  fuller  good."  ^ 

But  just  what  it  means  that  one  ideal  should  be  ''better," 
or  one  good  ''fuller"  than  another,  we  are  not  told.  There 
appears  to  be  no  sense  in  which  ideals  or  goods  are  commen- 
surable, save  in  the  sense  that  some  come  later  than  others 
in  time.  There  appears  to  be  abundant  justification  even 
in  the  relatively  sober  and  experimental  view  of  these  writers, 
for  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell's  general  indictment  of  the  new 
evolutionism : 

"An  ideal  to  which  the  world  continuously  approaches  is,  to 
these  minds,  too  dead  and  static  to  be  inspiring.  Not  only  the 
aspirations,  but  the  ideal  too,  must  change  and  develop  with  the 
course  of  evolution;  there  must  be  no  fixed  goal,  but  a  continual 
fashioning  of  fresh  needs  by  the  impulse  which  is  hfe  and  which 
alone  gives  unity  to  the  process.  .  .  .  Somehow,  without  expUcit 
statement,  the  assurance  is  slipped  in  that  the  future,  though  we 
cannot  foresee  it,  will  be  better  than  the  past  or  the  present;  the 
reader  is  like  the  child  who  expects  a  sweet  because  it  has  been  told 
to  open  its  mouth  and  shut  its  eyes."  - 

In  short  the  gospel  of  action  for  action's  sake,  with  its 
characteristic  emphasis  on  novelty,  change  and  creativeness, 
tends  to  view  life  as  without  destination,  and  without  any 
fixed  standards  or  orientation  by  which  comparative  attain- 
ment may  be  estimated.  The  instrumentalists,  like  many 
radical  theorists,  are  protected  against  themselves  by  their 
adherence  to  the  traditional  ideal  of  collective  human  happi- 
ness, but  in  principle  they  are  open  to  the  same  charge  as 
that  which  may  be  brought  against  the  more  revolutionary 
exponents  of  irrationalism.  They  encourage  the  view  that 
it  does  not  make  so  much  difference  where  man  goes  provided 
he  is  on  his  way. 

^  Creative  Intelligence,  p.  404. 

2  The  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy,  pp.  12,  14-15. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  BERGSON 


349 


CHAPTER  XXIV 
THE  PRACTICAL  PHILOSOPHY   OF  BERGSON 

The  most  extraordinary  feature  of  the  vogue  of  Bergson 
is  the  fact  that  he  should  have  won  so  many  disciples  despite 
the  fact  that  he  has  never  explicitly  and  unqualifiedly  avowed 
any  moral  or  religious  creed.  He  has  said  quite  justly  that 
it  is  inconsistent  with  his  method  that  any  such  implications 
should  be  deduced  from  the  philosophical  principles  he  has 
already  affirmed.  He  believes  in  taking  up  one  problem  at 
a  time,  and  in  refusing  to  anticipate  the  solution.  Therefore 
since  he  has  never  taken  up  the  problem  of  morals  or  the 
problem  of  rehgion,  neither  he  nor  anyone  else  can  as  yet 
know  just  what  solution  he  will  reach.  Nevertheless  the 
world  abounds  in  syndicalists,  futurists,  Christians  and  other 
sectarians  who  own  allegiance  to  him  and  invoke  his  au- 
thority. 

There  are  two  reasons  which  go  far  toward  explaining  this 
paradox.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  an  elusiveness  in  his 
fundamental  conceptions  that  makes  it  very  easy  for  any 
man  of  faith  to  read  his  faith  into  them.  Having  rejected 
the  reason  as  a  means  to  metaphysical  insight,  Bergson  has 
exposed  himself  to  the  discipleship  of  every  man  with  an 
intuition  or  a  cause  for  which  he  can  assign  no  reason.  A 
second,  and  doubtless  a  profounder,  explanation  is  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  Bergson  has  claimed  to  refute  mechanical 
science.  Bergsonism,  like  idealism  in  the  last  century,  has 
gained  miscellaneous  adherents  who  have  been  driven  into 
its  camp  by  the  common  fear  of  materialism.  There  is 
always  an  army  of  such  refugees  ready  to  accept  the  leader- 
ship of  any  champion  who  at  the  time  promises  to  save  them 
from  this  formidable  menace.  Bergson  appears  to  be  a 
more  redoubtable  champion  even  than  the  idealists,  because 
he  meets  the  scientists  on  their  own  ground.     In  each  of  his 

348 


major  writings  he  has  taken  a  scientific  problem  as  his  point 
of  departure,  a  psychological  problem  in  the  Essay  on  the 
Immediate  Data  of  Consciousness  and  in  the  Matter  and 
Memory y  a  biological  problem  in  the  Creative  Evolution.  As 
a  result  he  has  enjoyed  something  of  the  prestige  of  science 
at  the  same  time  that  he  has  attacked  the  orthodox  theories 

of  science. 

Bergson  himself  has  gone  so  far  as  to  claim  that  through 
his  championship  of  'liberty,''  ''spirit''  and  ''creation,"  he 
has  ahgned  himself  in  the  broad  sense  with  the  religious 
party  against  the  naturaUstic  party.  In  a  letter  written  to 
the  Belgian  Jesuit,  Father  de  Tonquedec,  in  reply  to  an 
attempt  to  draw  him  out  on  the  subject  of  religion,  Bergson 
wrote : 

"The  considerations  which  I  have  set  forth  in  my  Essay  on  the 
Immediate  Data  of  Consciousness  culminated  by  bringing  to  light 
the  fact  of  liberty;  those  in  Matter  and  Memory  made  palpable,  I 
trust,  the  reality  of  spirit  (or  mind);  those  in  Creative  Evolution 
presented  creation  as  a  fact.  From  all  this  there  clearly  emerges 
the  idea  of 'a  God  who  is  a  creator  and  who  is  free;  who  generates 
at  once  matter  and  life;  and  whose  creative  effort  continues,  on  the 
side  of  life,  through  the  evolution  of  species  and  the  formation  of 
human  personalities.  From  all  this,  consequently,  there  results 
the  refutation  of  monism  and  of  pantheism  in  general."  ^ 

In  other  words,  Bergson  belongs  to  the  biological  or 
vitaHstic  party  in  science  at  large,  to  the  party  which  would 
insist  that  the  organic  is  irreducible  to  the  inorganic ;  to  the 
psychological  party  in  biology,  that  is  to  the  party  that 
would  insist  upon  the  essentially  spiritual  character  of  Ufe; 
and  to  the  libertarian  party  in  psychology,  which  would 
/  /  /  dehver  the  will  from  dependence  on  physiological  conditions. 
In  so  far  as  these  doctrines  exalt  the  Uving  above  the  dead, 
and  the  spiritual  above  the  material,  Bergson  legitimately  fur- 
nishes aid  and  comfort  to  the  party  of  faith  in  their  struggle 
against   the   disillusionment  of   modern   science.     At    the 

1  I  owe  this  citation  to  A.  O.  Lovejoy's  "Bergson  and  Romantic  Evolu- 
I  I  I  \  tionism,"  University  of  California  Chronicle,  Vol.  XV,  pp.  54-56.  This  is 
I  '    '  I  much  the  best  account  of  Bergson's  practical  philosophy  of  which  I  know. 


350 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  BERGSON 


351 


same  time  it  is  important  to  note  that  in  all  these  doctrines 
Bergson  never  abandons  the  method  of  observation  or  the 
field  of  nature.  So  far  there  is  no  reference  to  an  ultimate 
cause  or  an  ultimate  destiny,  no  provision  either  for  the  God 
of  religion  or  for  man's  immortal  soul.  Let  us  now  turn 
to  the  more  pecuHar  teachings  of  this  philosopher,  and  glean 
what  we  can  that  is  of  practical  import  from  his  general 
doctrines  as  well  as  from  his  own  scattered  and  inconclusive 
observations  on  practical  topics. 

I.     QUIETISM 

We  shall  find,  I  think,  that  there  is  one  very  fundamental 
ambiguity  in  Bergson's  practical  philosophy,  which  affects 
not  only  the  moral  ideal,  but  the  religious  emotions  as  well. 
In  ideahzing  Hfe  are  we  to  look  forward  and  outward,  as  one 
does  in  practical  affairs,  or  are  we  to  look  backward  and 
inward,  as  one  does  in  mystical  insight?  Psychologically 
these  two  attitudes  inhibit  one  another.  It  is  similar  to  the 
opposition  that  we  have  already  noted  between  being  alive 
and  feeling  ahve.  But  in  Bergson's  philosophy  the  opposi- 
tion is  explicitly  affirmed  and  receives  a  new  emphasis. 
When  we  are  in  action  we  invoke  the  intellect  to  guide  us; 
and  in  so  far  as  our  consciousness  assumes  the  form  of  inteUi- 
gence,  it  externalizes  objects  and  externalizes  ourselves  in 
relation  to  objects.  We  also  tend  to  become  preoccupied 
with  the  goal,  and  relatively  insensible  of  the  action  itself. 

"The  function  of  the  intellect  is  to  preside  over  actions.  Now, 
in  action,  it  is  the  result  that  interests  us;  the  means  matter  little 
provided  the  end  is  attained.  Thence  it  comes  that  we  are  alto- 
gether bent  on  the  end  to  be  realized,  generally  trusting  to  it  in 
order  that  the  idea  may  become  an  act;  and  thence  it  comes  also 
that  only  the  goal  where  our  activity  will  rest  is  pictured  explicitly 
to  our  mind:  the  movements  constituting  the  action  itself  either 
elude  our  consciousness  or  reach  it  only  confusedly."  ^ 

But  in  order,  on  the  other  hand,  to  be  aware  of  life  itself 
as  the  deeper  reahty,  consciousness  must  ''turn  inwards  on 

*  Creative  Evolution,  pp.  182,  299. 


ii 


I 


f 

i 


itself,  and  awaken  the  potentialities  of  intuition  that  .  .  . 
slumber  within  it." 

*'Let  us  try  to  see,  no  longer  with  the  eyes  of  the  intellect  alone, 
which  grasps  only  the  already  made  and  which  looks  from  the 
outside,  but  with  the  spirit.  I  mean  with  that  faculty  of  seeing 
which  is  immanent  in  the  faculty  of  acting  and  which  springs  up, 
somehow,  by  the  twisting  of  the  will  on  itself,  when  action  is  turned 
into  knowledge,  like  heat,  so  to  say,  into  light."  ^ 

Even  the  most  limber  consciousness  must  find  it  difficult, 
if  not  impossible,  at  one  and  the  same  time  to  be  ''altogether 
bent  on  the  end  to  be  realized,"  and  to  "twist  on  itself." 
The  heat  of  action  that  generates  the  inward  light  cannot 
but  be  cooled  at  its  source  by  the  effort  to  witness  the  light. 
In  any  case,  there  is  a  clear  duality  between  the  life  of  action, 
and  the  quietistic  sense  of  what  it  is  to  live.  For  the  quietist, 
as  Santayana  puts  it,  "life,  like  the  porcupine  when  not 
ruffled  by  practical  alarms,  can  let  its  fretful  quills  subside. 
The  mystic  can  live  happy  in  the  droning  consciousness  of 
his  own  heart-beats  and  those  of  the  universe."  ^  But  then 
the  very  freedom  from  life's  alarms  tends  to  reduce  life  to 
such  mere  organic  functioning  as  can  dispense  with  conscious 
guidance  —  to  digestion,  respiration  and  circulation.  Or 
a  man  may  enter  upon  the  affairs  of  life,  involving  inter- 
course with  an  external  environment,  objectified  and  ordered 
by  the  intellect;  and  then  he  loses  the  intuition  of  the  elan 
vital,  and  dwells  in  the  artificial  world  of  spacial  schema- 
tism. 

II.    FREEDOM 

We  shall  return  again,  in  considering  religion,  to  the 
quietistic  motive  in  Bergson.  Meanwhile  let  us  turn  to  the 
very  different  motive  which  evidently  prompts  what  little 
he  has  to  say  about  current  moral  issues.  No  one  has 
insisted  more  positively  than  Bergson  upon  the  prerogative 
of  human  freedom. 

I   have   already  spoken  of  the   complexity    of   motives 

*  Ihid.y  pp.  182,  250. 

*  Winds  of  Doctrine,  p.  13. 


I 


352 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


underlying  this  conception.^     With  Bergson,  as  with  James, 
freedom    signifies     the    absence    not    only    of    mechanical 
necessity,  but  the  absence  also  of  the  control  of  rational 
purpose.     To  conceive  the  act  as  part  of  a  system,  whether 
a  quantitative  system  such  as  is  formulated  by  the  exact 
sciences,  or  an  ideal  system  such  as  is  formulated  by  the 
moral  sciences,  is  to  fall  into  the  error  of  intellectuaUsm.     It 
is  to  view  action  externally  as  part  of  a  dead  and  rigid  scheme 
of  spatial  relations.     But  the  way  of  escape  for  Bergson  is 
not,  as  with  James,  to  conceive  the  relations  of  the  act  more 
loosely,  so  as  to  admit  of  a  certain  free  play  and  diversity  of 
alternatives.     Bergson  would  regard  chance,  or  the^  mere 
absence  of  determination,  as  still  a  purely  external  view  of 
the  matter.     An  act  which  is  disjoined  from  its  surroundings 
is  still  an  act  viewed  as  part  of  a  scheme  which  is  essentially 
extended  or  spatial  in  its  form.     To  apprehend  freedom  we 
must  abandon  schematism  altogether,  and  view  the  act 
from  within.     We  then  find  that  freedom  is  not  so  much  an 
attribute  of  action  as  it  is  the  very  essence  of  action.     Action, 
real  time,  the  elan  vital,  are  all  one  thing  which  can  be 
grasped  only  by  an  immediate,  instinctive  feeling  for  it. 
He  who  is  alive,  and  is  not  misled  by  his  own  externalizing 
and  schematizing  intellect,  knows  that  Ufe  wells  up  from 
within,  that  it  carries  its  own  past  history  along  with  it,  that 
its  parts  interpenetrate  and  infuse  one  another,  and  that  it 
creates  its  future  as  it  goes.     Its  past  is  a  part  of  its  nature, 
like  maturity  of  character,  or  ripeness  of  fruit,  or  the  sea- 
soned flavor  of  old  wines;  its  future  is  its  potentiaHty  and 
promise,  like  the  quality  of  youth.     It  has  no  past  and  no 
future  in  the  sense  of  an  external  control  lying  beyond  itself 
in  the  distance.    All  that  it  has,  it  has  now  within  itself  as 
the  source  of  its  spontaneous  energy. 

I  need  scarcely  say  that  to  many  minds  this  conception  of 
the  creative  power  of  Ufe  will  at  once  supply  a  sufficient  basis 
for  moral  and  religious  philosophy.  It  satisfies  the  moral 
demand  that  man  shall  be  the  responsible  author  of  his  own 
acts,  and  that  he  shall  have  an  effective  power  over  his  own 

1  Cf.  above,  pp.  235-237. 


PfflLOSOPHY  OF  BERGSON 


353 


destiny.  *'The  France  of  to-morrow,"  says  Bergson,  ''will 
be  what  we  will  it  to  be,  for  the  future  is  dependent  on  us, 
and  is  that  which  free  human  wills  make  of  it."  ^  It  satisfies 
the  reUgious  demand  that  the  human  prerogatives  shall  in 
the  cosmos  at  large  be  pre-potent  over  the  blind  forces  of 
physical  nature.  For  according  to  this  teaching  mechanical 
necessity  is  a  fabrication  of  the  intellect,  having  the  purely 
instrumental  value  of  facilitating  action,  and  affording  no 
insight  whatever  into  the  original  sources  of  things.  Matter 
is  impotent;  in  fact  it  is  nothing  at  all  but  a  sort  of  relic  of  a 
power  that  has  run  out,  a  sort  of  debris  or  precipitate  which 
life  leaves  behind  along  the  course  which  it  pursues. 

The  difference  of  temper  between  the  activism  of  Bergson 
and  the  activism  of  Nietzsche  is  adequately  conveyed  by  the 
contrast  between  the  terms  ''  creation  "  and  ''power."  With 
Nietzsche  life  is  essentially  aggressive  and  miUtant.  It  must 
overcome  and  appropriate;  it  must  achieve  superiority  and 
ascendancy.  In  other  words,  Ufe  in  Nietzsche's  sense  impHes 
inferiority  and  death  as  its  converse.  But  for  Bergson  to 
live  is  to  create,  to  fructify  and  to  increase.  Life  in  this 
sense  does  not  flourish  at  the  expense  of  Ufe,  the  strong  at 
the  expense  of  the  weak;  but  it  redeems  the  waste  places, 
and  fiUs  only  the  vacancy  of  death  and  non-being.  Further- 
more, there  is  in  Bergson,  as  we  shaU  presently  see,  a  sense  of 
the  soUdarity  of  all  Uves,  as  parts  of  one  great  forward  move- 
ment, springing  from  a  common  source  and  serving  a  common 
cause. 

m.     LIFE   VERSUS   MECHANISM 

A  somewhat  more  specific  and  expUcit  theory  of  value 
appears  in  Bergson's  preference  of  those  forms  of  human  Ufe 
which  are  relatively  spontaneous  and  individual  to  those 
forms  which  are  relatively  automatic.  This  distinction  Ues 
at  the  basis  of  his  theory  of  the  comic  as  developed  in  the 
book  entitled  Laughter,  He  interprets  laughter  as  a  sort  of 
unconscious  criticism. 

1  From  a  speech  delivered  in  1915,  quoted  by  A.  Lalande,  Philosophical 
Rmew,  VoL  XXV  (1916),  p.  535- 


354 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


*'The  rigid,  the  ready-made,  the  mechanical,  in  contrast  with 
the  supple,  the  ever-changing  and  the  living,  absent-mindedness  in 
contrast  with  attention,  in  a  word,  automatism  in  contrast  with 
free  activity,  such  are  the  defects  that  laughter  singles  out  and 
would  fain  correct.'*  ^ 

Ordinarily  a  creation  of  art  must  be  individual.  But  the 
comic  character  is  too  generalized  and  unsocial  to  arouse  our 
sympathies.  Since  we  do  not  feel  with  him,  we  can  laugh 
at  him.  In  other  words,  the  comic  character  is  a  *^  character,'' 
wooden,  abstract  and  typical.  On  the  same  principle,  the 
foreigner  is  always  a  character,  and  funny,  so  long  as  his 
general  racial  or  national  characteristics  are  so  prominent 
as  to  eclipse  his  individuality.  When  we  know  him  better 
he  is  no  longer  a  *' figure  of  a  man,"  but  an  individual  whom 
we  must  now  take  seriously.  The  utility  of  laughter  in 
social  life  at  large  is  as  a  means  of  penalizing  those  forms 
of  life  that  are  over-habituated  and  stilted,  or  lacking  in 
responsiveness  and  spontaneity. 

This  same  principle  underlies  Mr.  Bergson's  most  impor- 
tant public  utterance  since  the  opening  of  the  war,  his 
Discourse  before  the  French  Academy  of  Moral  and  Political 
Sciences  on  December  12,  1914.^  He  regards  the  present 
German  Empire  as  the  incarnation  of  mechanism  and 
artificiality,  and  the  present  war  as  the  supreme  struggle 
between  this  degrading  principle  and  the  counter-principle 
of  life  and  spontaneity.  Since  this  address  affords  almost 
the  only  reliable  evidence  of  the  sort  of  moral  Bergson  would 
draw  from  his  own  philosophy  I  feel  justified  in  quoting  it  at 
some  length.  In  the  most  significant  passage  he  represents 
some  future  philosopher,  who  is  enabled  to  see  things  in  the 
proper  perspective,  as  commenting  thus  on  the  tragic  events 
of  the  present  war: 

*'He  will  say  that  the  idea,  peculiar  to  the  nineteenth  century,  of 
employing  science  in  the  satisfaction  of  our  material  wants,  .  .  . 
had  equipped  man  in  less  than  fifty  years  with  more  tools  than  he 

^  Laughter,  p.  130. 

^  «  Published  in  a  pamphlet  entitled  Paroles  Francaises,  Second  Series,  Librai- 
ric  MUitaire  Berger-LevrauU.  * 


PfflLOSOPHY  OF  BERGSON 


355 


had  made  during  the  thousands  of  years  he  had  Hved  on  the  earth. 
Each  new  machine  being  for  man  a  new  organ  —  an  artificial  organ 
which  merely  prolongs  the  natural  organs  — his  body   became 
suddenly  and  prodigiously  increased  in  size,  without  his  soul  beinor 
able  at  the  same  time  to  dilate  to  the  dimensions  of  his  new  body" 
From  this  disproportion  there  issued  the  problems,  moral,  social, 
mternational,  which  most  of  the  nations  endeavored  to  solve  by 
fillmg  up  the  soulless  void  in  the  body  politic,  by  creating  more 
hberty,  more  fraternity,  more  justice  than  the  world  had  ever  seen 
Now,  while  mankind  labored  at  this  task  of  spiritualization,  infe- 
rior powers  .  .  .  plotted  an  inverse  experience  for  mankind!  . 
What  kind  of  a  world  would  it  be  if  this  mechanism  should  seize'  the 
human  race  entire,  and  if  the  peoples,  instead  of  raising  themselves 
to  a  ncher  and  more  harmonious  diversity,  as  persons  may  do  were 
to  fall  into  the  uniformity  of  things?  .  .  .    What  would  happen,  in 
short,  if  the  moral  effort  of  humanity  should  turn  in'^its  tracks  at 
the  moment  of  attaining  its  goal,  and  if  some  diaboHcal  contrivance 
should  cause  it  to  produce  the  materiaHzation  of  spirit,  instead  of 
the  spiritualization  of  matter?    There  was  a  people  predestined  to 
try  the  experiment.    Prussia  had  been  militarized  by  her  kings: 
Germany  had  been  miHtarized  by  Prussia:  a  powerful  nation  was 
on  the  spot  marching  forward  in  mechanical  order.    Administra- 
tion and  military  mechanism  were  only  waiting  to  make  alHance 
with  industrial  mechanism.    The  combination  once  made,  a  for- 
midable machine  would  come  into  existence.    A  touch  upon  the 
starting-gear  and  the  other  nations  would  be  dragged  in  the  wake 
of  Gerniany,  subjects  to  the  same  movement,  prisoners  of  the  same 
mechanism.     Such  would  be  the  meaning  of  the  war  on  the  day 
when  Germany  should  decide  upon  its  declaration.  .  .  .     That  the 
powers  of  death  might  be  matched  against  life  in  one  supreme 
combat,  destiny  had  gathered  them  all  at  a  single  point/'  ^ 

The  certain  promise  of  victory  for  the  Allies  is  to  be  found, 
according  to  this  teaching,  in  the  fact  that  their  moral  force 
is  inexhaustible.  '^On  the  one  side,  that  which  wears  out; 
on  the  other  side,  that  which  never  wears  out.  Machines  do 
in  fact  wear  out."  2    Despite  their  professions  of  philosophy, 

»  Op.  cit.,  pp.  20-24.  This  English  rendering  is  to  be  found  in  a  part  of  the 
address  reprinted  in  the  Hibbert  Journal,  1915,  pp.  473-475,  under  the  title  of 
"Life  and  Matter  at  War." 

^  Op.  cit.,  p.  23. 


35^ 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Bergson  thinks  the  Germans  are  really  sustained  only  by  the 
strength  of  their  machine.  They  exult  in  the  pride  of  their 
power.  When  the  machine  becomes  worn,  and  the  power 
wanes,  there  will  be  nothing  from  which  to  renew  them. 
The  Allies,  on  the  other  hand,  are  alive;  and  living  things, 
unlike  machines,  recover  their  strength  and  regenerate  their 
injured  tissues.  They  are,  furthermore,  Hnked  with  the 
great  cosmic  reservoir  of  Ufe  and  on  this  they  may  draw  so 
long  as  may  be  necessary.  Their  eventual  victory  is  as 
certain  as  it  is  certain  that  life  will  triumph  over  ^death  m 
the  world  at  large. 

IV.  man's  place  in  nature 

We  must  now  turn  to  the  more  metaphysical  aspects  of 
Bergson's  philosophy,  and  ask  what  assurance  he  gives  us  of 
the  triumph  of  Ufe  in  general,  and  of  human  life  in  particular. 

I.  Man  as  a  Part  of  Nature.  In  the  first  place  we  have 
to  observe  that  Bergson  renounces  both  supernaturalism  and 
duaUsm.  We  must  not  build  our  hopes  on  any  divorce 
between  the  spiritual  man  and  his  natural  body  or  environ- 
ment. Such  philosophies  merely  make  the  spiritual  man 
unreal.  If  science  is  to  be  disputed  it  must  be  within  that 
very  field  of  nature  which  science  claims  to  rule. 

*Thilosophy  introduces  us  into  the  spiritual  life.  And  it  shows 
us  at  the  same  time  the  relation  of  the  Ufe  of  the  spirit  to  the  body. 
The  great  error  of  the  doctrines  on  the  spirit  has  been  the  idea  that 
by  isolating  the  spiritual  Ufe  from  all  the  rest,  by  suspending  it  m 
space  as  high  as  possible  above  the  earth,  they  were  placmg  it 
beyond  attack,  as  if  they  were  not  thereby  simply  exposing  it  to  be 
taken  as  an  effect  of  mirage." 

Bergson  goes  on  to  say  that  it  is  well  to  cUng  to  the  beUefs 
in  freedom,  in  the  superiority  of  spirit  to  matter,  in  the 
eminence  of  man  over  the  animal,  even  in  personal  immor- 
taUty;  but  says  that 

"all  these  questions  will  remam  unanswered,  a  philosophy  of 
intuition  will  be  a  negation  of  science,  wUl  be  sooner  or  later  swept 


PfflLOSOPHY  OF   BERGSON 


357 


away  by  science,  if  it  does  not  resolve  to  see  the  Ufe  of  the  body 
just  where  it  reaUy  is,  on  the  road  that  leads  to  the  Ufe  of  the 
spirit."  1 

2.  PluraUsm  and  the  Triumph  of  Life.  Furthermore 
we  must  not  build  our  hopes  on  any  monistic  principle  that 
would  explain  the  world  as  tiie  systematic  realization  of  the 
spiritual  ideals.  In  the  widest  view  that  one  can  take,  the 
worid  remains  a  vast  chaotic  manifold,  with  unbridged 
chasms,  unredeemed  failures  and  indefinite  boundaries. 
There  is,  it  is  true,  a  certain  consolation  in  this  very  lack 
of  system  and  completeness.  For  it  prevents  science  from 
drawing  any  final  conclusions  from  that  part  of  nature  which 
we  happen  to  know  best. 

''The  universe  is  an  assemblage  of  solar  systems  which  we  have 
every  reason  to  believe  analogous  to  our  own.  No  doubt  they  are 
not  absolutely  independent  of  one  another.  Our  sun  radiates  heat 
and  light  beyond  the  farthest  planet,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  our 
entire  solar  system  is  moving  in  a  definite  direction  as  if  it  were 
drawn.  There  is,  then,  a  bond  between  the  worlds.  But  this 
bond  may  be  regarded  as  infinitely  loose  in  comparison  with  the 
mutual  dependence  which  unites  the  parts  of  the  same  world 
among  themselves;  so  that  it  is  not  artificially,  for  reasons  of  mere 
convenience,  that  we  isolate  our  solar  system:  nature  itself  invites 
us  to  isolate  it.  As  Uving  beings,  we  depend  on  the  planet  on  which 
we  are,  and  on  the  sun  which  provides  for  it,  but  on  nothing  else. 
As  thinking  beings,  we  may  apply  the  laws  of  our  physics  to  our 
own  worid,  and  extend  them  to  each  of  the  worids  taken  separately; 
but  nothing  tells  us  that  they  apply  to  the  entire  universe,  nor  even 
that  such  an  affirmation  has  any  meaning;  for  the  universe  is  not 
made,  but  is  being  made  continually.  It  is  growing,  perhaps 
indefinitely,  by  the  addition  of  new  worlds."  ^ 

But  if  we  may  derive  a  vague  hope  from  the  pluralistic 
constitution  of  the  world,  we  are  at  the  same  time  prevented 
from  claiming  the  worid  as  made  for  man.  The  very  freedom 
that  we  prize  forbids  us  to  conceive  that  the  worid  is  governed 
throughout  by  any  purpose,  even  a  beneficent  purpose. 

1  Creative  Evolution,  Mitchell's  translation,  p.  268. 

2  Op,  cit.,  p.  241. 


358 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


''Life  .  .  .  transcends  finality  as  it  transcends  the  other  cate- 
gories. .  .  .  There  has  not,  therefore,  properly  speaking,  been  any 
project  or  plan.  ...  It  is  abundantly  evident  that  the  rest  of  na- 
ture is  not  for  the  sake  of  man:  we  struggle  Hke  the  other  species, 
we  have  struggled  against  other  species.  .  .  .  It  would  be  wrong  to 
regard  humanity,  such  as  we  have  it  before  our  eyes,  as  prefigured 
in  the  evolutionary  movement.  It  cannot  even  be  said  to  be  the 
outcome  of  the  whole  of  evolution,  for  evolution  has  been  accom- 
plished on  several  divergent  fines,  and  while  the  human  species  is 
at  the  end  of  one  of  them,  other  lines  have  been  followed  with  other 
species  at  their  end.'' 

There  is  only  one  sense  in  which  man  may  be  said  to  be 
supreme  in  nature.  Though  he  in  no  sense  represents  the 
consummation  of  the  whole  natural  process,  nevertheless  he 
surpasses  the  rest  of  nature  in  his  power  to  cope  with  matter. 
Through  his  intellect  man  can  escape  the  bond  of  habit,  and 
continue  to  move  forward  to  fresh  creations,  when  the  plants 
and  lower  animals  have  reached  a  stationary  equilibrium. 
The  pre-eminence  of  man  lies  in  his  capacity  for  growth  and 
progress. 

''From  our  point  of  view,  life  appears  in  its  entirety  as  an  im- 
mense wave  which,  starting  from  a  centre,  spreads  outwards, 
and  which  on  almost  the  whole  of  its  circumference  is  stopped  and 
converted  into  oscillation:  at  one  smgle  point  the  obstacle  has  been 
forced,  the  impulsion  has  passed  freely.  It  is  this  freedom  that  the 
human  form  registers.  Everywhere,  but  in  man,  consciousness  has 
had  to  come  to  a  stand;  in  man  alone  it  has  kept  on  its  way.  Man, 
then,  continues  the  vital  movement  indefinitely,  although  he  does 
not  draw  along  with  him  all  that  life  carries  in  itself .  .  .  .  On  other 
lines  of  evolution  there  have  travelled  other  tendencies  which  life 
impfied,  and  of  which,  since  everything  interpenetrates,  man  has, 
doubtless,  kept  something,  but  of  which  he  has  kept  only  very 
little.  //  is  as  if  a  vague  and  formless  being,  whom  we  may  call  as 
we  will,  man  or  superman,  had  sought  to  realize  himself,  and  had 
succeeded  only  by  abandoning  a  part  of  himself  on  the  way.''  ^ 

It  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  no  guarantee  even  in  the 
case  of  man  that  life  will  not  eventually  die  down  and  expire, 
fatally  obstructed  by  the  inertia  of  its  own  material  creations, 

1  Op.  ciL,  pp.  265-266.    Cf.  also  pp.  269-270. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  BERGSON 


359 


by  a  sort  of  friction  with  its  own  vestiges.  Life  is  at  best  a 
struggle  in  which  inert  matter  is  a  most  redoubtable  adver- 
sary. 

"All  our  analyses  show  us,  in  life,  an  effort  to  remount  the  indine 
that  matter  descends.  .  .  .  The  life  that  evolves  on  the  surface  of 
our  planet  is  indeed  attached  to  matter.  .  .  .  But  everything  hap- 
pens as  if  it  were  doing  its  utmost  to  set  itself  free  from  these  laws 
(of  inert  matter).  It  has  not  the  power  to  reverse  the  direction  of 
physical  changes.  ...  It  does,  however,  behave  absolutely  as  a 
force  would  behave  which,  left  to  itself,  would  work  in  the  inverse 
direction.  Incapable  of  stopping  the  course  of  material  changes 
downwards,  it  succeeds  in  retarding  it."  ^ 

From  this  doubtful  spectacle  we  can  take  refuge  only  in  the 
more  general  fact  that  *' beside  the  worlds  which  are  dying, 
there  are  without  doubt  worlds  that  are  being  born."  ^ 

3.  The  Human  IndividuaL  Even  if  we  count  life  the 
victor  in  the  struggle  with  inert  matter,  and  man  the  most 
successful  form  of  life,  this  does  not  imply  the  immortality 
of  the  human  individual.  It  seems  to  be  the  broad  stream 
of  humanity  rather  than  the  little  personal  rills,  to  which 
the  victory  is  given.  Indeed  the  very  categories  of  unity 
and  multiplicity  are  appropriate  to  matter  and  not  to  life. 
It  is  matter  which  individuates.  Just  as  life  at  its  source  is 
without  individuals,  so,  it  would  appear,  will  life  be  in  its 
triumphant  conquest  of  matter.  How  this  is  to  be  reconciled 
with  Bergson's  regard  for  the  individual  as  the  centre  and 
spring  of  human  life  does  not  appear.  This  is  a  favorite 
dilemma  for  voluntaristic  philosophies,  the  central  dilemma, 
for  example,  of  Schopenhauer's  philosophy.  It  is  through 
matter  that  wills  appear  to  be  divided,  so  that  the  original 
will  which  creates  matter  must  be  a  universal  will.  But  on 
the  other  hand,  the  peculiar  quality  of  will  appears  only 
where  there  is  an  individual  that  asserts  himself.  When 
dissolved  into  an  impersonal  or  collective  flow,  will  seems  to 
lapse  into  acquiescence  and  passivity.  Nevertheless,  Berg- 
son  expUcitly  tells  us  that  *^  souls  are  being  continually 

*  Op.  cit.,  pp.  245-246. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  246-247  (note). 


360 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


created,  which  nevertheless,  in  a  certain  sense,  pre-existed. 
They  are  nothing  else  than  the  little  rills  into  which  the  great 
river  of  Ufe  divides  itself,  flowing  through  the  body  of  hu- 
manity." ^ 

A  further  objection  to  personal  immortality  lies  in  the  fact 
that  it  seems  to  be  characteristic  of  Ufe  to  be  careless  of  the 
individual. 

''In  the  organized  world,  the  death  of  individuals  does  not  seem 
at  all  Uke  the  diminution  of  'life  in  general,'  or  like  a  necessity 
which  life  submits  to  reluctantly.  As  has  been  more  than  once 
remarked,  life  has  never  made  an  effort  to  prolong  indefinitely  the 
existence  of  the  individual,  although  on  so  many  other  points  it 
has  made  so  many  successful  efforts.  Everything  is  as  if  this  death 
had  been  willed,  or  at  least  accepted,  for  the  greater  progress  of 
life  in  general."  ^ 

V.    THE   CONCEPTION   OF   GOD 

I.  God  and  Time.^  In  most  theologies  it  is  thought  that 
the  exalted  station  of  God  requires  him  to  be  beyond  time. 
He  may,  as  the  ideaUsts,  for  example,  have  taught  us,  include 
time  within  himself  as  a  necessary  part  of  his  life,  or  he  may 
reveal  and  unfold  himself  in  time.  But  it  has  usually  been 
supposed  that  his  essential  nature  must  be  free  from  time's 
ravages,  and  Ufted  above  the  plain  of  change.  Among 
philosophies  of  the  type  we  are  now  considering,  however, 
the  world  is  thought  of  as  incurably  temporal.  If  God  is 
to  find  any  place  in  such  a  world,  he  must  belong  to  its 
past  or  to  its  future,  or  share  in  its  changing  vicissitudes. 
We  have  already  met  with  one  theology  of  this  type,  the 
finite  theism  of  James,  in  which  God  is  the  champion  of 
righteousness  in  its  long-protracted  struggle  with  evil.  We 
have  now  to  consider  other  possible  temporalistic  theologies, 
with  a  view  to  defining  the  theology  of  Bergson. 

Although  Bergson,  like  James,  is  a  pluralist  and  must 
therefore  regard  God  as  only  one  of  many  components  of 

1  Ibid.,  p.  270. 

«  Ibid.,  pp.  246-247  (note). 

»  For  an  excellent  discussion  of  this  subject,  cf.  A.  O.  Lovejoy,  op.  at. 


I 


I 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  BERGSON 


361 


reality,  he  is  not  like  James  primarily  a  moralist  in  his  theol- 
ogy. God  is  identified  not  with  the  moral  will,  or  with  duty, 
but  with  life  in  the  broader  sense,  in  its  lower  and  more 
instinctive  forms  as  well  as  in  its  more  human  and  conscious 
forms.  But  in  which  of  its  aspects  is  this  cosmic  life  to  be 
regarded  as  divine?  There  is  one  further  alternative  which 
is  evidently  inconsistent  with  the  general  spirit  of  Bergson's 
philosophy.  It  would  be  possible  to  think  of  God  as  the 
goal  of  life,  as  a  condition  of  stable  perfection,  an  eventual 
consummation  which  life  is  some  day  to  attain.  But  since 
in  this  philosophy  the  living  is  the  good,  and  the  inert  is  evil, 
a  static  God  coming  after  the  movement  of  life  is  over  would 
be  less  admirable,  less  divine,  than  the  lowest  of  living  crea- 
tures. If  God  is  to  be  more  and  not  less  than  animals  and 
man,  he  must  be  more  purely  or  more  extensively  alive. 
There  remain  two  further  alternatives,  and  which  of  these 
Bergson  chooses  it  is  impossible  to  say.  Different  as  they 
are,  he  nevertheless  appears,  in  so  far  as  he  can  be  said  to 
have  made  any  choice  at  all,  to  have  chosen  them  both. 

2.  God  as  the  Source.  On  the  one  hand,  God  may  be 
thought  of  as  the  inexhaustible  reservoir  from  which  life 
springs.  This  is  what  Wells  would  call  *'  God  the  Creator.'^ 
Bergson  is  fond  of  metaphors  and  in  this  connection  he  is 
especially  fond  of  pyrotechnic  metaphors. 

*'Let  us  imagine,"  he  says,  "a  vessel  full  of  steam  at  a  high 
pressure,  and  here  and  there  in  its  sides  a  crack  through  which  the 
steam  is  escaping  in  a  jet.  The  steam  thrown  into  the  air  is  nearly 
all  condensed  into  little  drops  which  fall  back,  and  this  condensa- 
tion and  this  fall  represent  simply  the  loss  of  something,  an  inter- 
ruption, a  deficit.  But  a  small  part  of  the  jet  of  steam  subsists 
uncondensed  for  some  seconds;  it  is  making  an  effort  to  raise  the 
drops  which  are  falling;  it  succeeds  at  most  in  retarding  their  fall. 
So,  from  an  immense  reservoir  of  life,  jets  must  be  gushing  out 
unceasingly,  of  which  each  falling  back,  is  a  world.  The  evolution 
of  living  species  within  this  world  represents  what  subsists  of  the 
primitive  direction  of  the  original  jet,  and  of  an  impulsion  which 
continues  itself  in  a  direction  the  inverse  of  materiality." 

A  little  further  on  in  this  same  context,  Bergson  explicitly 


362 


THE  PRESENT   CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


alludes  to  this  reservoir,  or  central  source,  as  God.  The 
material  ^world  being  only  a  sort  of  lapse  or  reversal  of  life, 
God  as  the  source  of  life  may  be  said  to  be  the  only  positive 
and  quickening  source  in  the  universe. 

"If  I  consider  the  world  in  which  we  live,  I  find  that  the  auto- 
matic and  strictly  determined  evolution  of  this  well-knit  whole  is 
action  which  is  unmaking  itself,  and  that  the  unforeseen  forms 
which  life  cuts  out  in  it,  forms  capable  of  being  themselves  pro- 
longed into  unforeseen  movements,  represent  the  action  that  is 
making  itself.  Now,  I  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  the  other 
worlds  are  analogous  to  ours,  that  things  happen  there  in  the  same 
way.  And  I  know  they  were  not  all  constructed  at  the  same  time, 
since  observation  shows  me,  even  to-day,  nebulae  in  course  of  con- 
centration. Now,  if  the  same  kind  of  action  is  going  on  every- 
where, whether  it  is  that  which  is  unmaking  itself  or  whether  it  is 
that  which  is  striving  to  remake  itself,  I  simply  express  this  probable 
similitude  when  I  speak  of  a  centre  from  which  worlds  shoot  out 
like  rockets  in  a  fire-works  display  —  provided,  however,  that  I 
do  not  present  this  centre  as  a  thing,  but  as  a  continuity  of  shooting 
out.  God  thus  defined,  has  nothing  of  the  already  made:  He  is 
unceasing  life,  action,  freedom.  Creation,  so  conceived,  is  not  a 
mystery;  we  experience  it  in  ourselves  when  we  act  freely."  ^ 

In  this  pyrotechnic  theology,  then,  God  is  a  "continuity 
of  shooting  out."  In  so  far  as  such  a  God  is  worshipped,  the 
worshipper  tends  to  look  back  to  the  source  of  things.  This 
is  the  religious  sequel  to  that  moral  quietism  which  we  have 
seen  to  be  one  of  the  legitimate  interpretations  of  his  teach- 
ing. This  is  Bergson's  substitute  for  the  religion  of  mystical 
union  and  dependence.  By  cultivating  the  sense  of  life  in 
its  purity,  turning  away  from  the  divided  and  ordered  world 
of  the  intelligence,  one  may  feel  the  throbbing  of  the  divine 
life  within  one's  own  pulses.  And  in  the  inexhaustibility  of 
the  divine  life  one  may  take  courage  despite  the  evidence  of 
decay  and  death. 

3.  God  as  the  Current.  But  there  is  another  idea  hinted 
at  in  the  passages  already  quoted;  the  same  idea  in  which, 
as  we  have  seen  in  the  last  chapter,  all  activistic  philosophies 

*  Op.  cU.,  pp.  247, 248. 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  BERGSON 


363 


tend  to  culminate.  ^  God  may  be  construed  not  as  the  source 
of  life,  but  as  its  onward  flow,  its  set  and  current.  This 
would  be  similar  to  the  religion  professed  by  Bernard  Shaw. 

^  "The  only  faith,"  wrote  Mr.  Shaw,  "which  any  reasonable 

disciple  can  gain  from  the  Ring  is  not  in  love,  but  in  life  itself  as  a 

tireless  power  which  is  continually  drawing  onward  and  upward  — 

not,  please  observe,  being  beckoned  or  drawn  by  Das  Ewig-Weih- 

liche  or  any  other  external  sentimentality,  but  growing  from  within 

by  its  own  inexpKcable  energy,  into  higher  and  ever  higher  forms 

of  organization,  the  strengths  and  needs  of  which  are  continually 

superseding  the  institutions  which  were  made  to  fit  our  former 
requirements."  2  ^      ^         ^  - 

But  in  Bergson  there  is  no  such  clear  recognition  of  a  scale 
of  life,  of  ''higher  and  ever  higher  forms  of  organization." 
There  is  a  direction,  yes;  but  not  an  ordered  progression. 
Such  direction  as  there  is,  is  rather  the  effect  of  the  original 
centrifugal  movement  of  life  prolonged  by  its  own  momentum. 
The  inspiration  which  such  a  view  affords  is  not  the  hope  of 
mounting  higher,  but  the  sense  of  participating  with  all  the 
lie  of  the  world  in  an  irresistible  rush  which  shall  sweep  away 
every  obstruction: 

"Such  a  doctrine  .  .  .  gives  .  .  .  more  power  to  act  and  to 
live.  For,  with  it,  we  feel  ourselves  no  longer  isolated  in  humanity, 
humanity  no  longer  seems  isolated  in  the  nature  that  it  dominates! 
As  the  smallest  grain  of  dust  is  bound  up  with  our  entire  solar  sys^ 
tem,  drawn  along  with  it  in  that  undivided  movement  of  descent 
which  is  materiaHty  itself,  so  all  organized  beings,  from  the  hum- 
blest  to  the  highest,  from  the  first  origins  of  life  to  the  time  in  which 
we  are,  and  in  all  places  as  in  all  rimes,  do  but  evidence  a  single 
impulsion,  the  inverse  of  the  movement  of  matter,  and  in  itself 
indivisible.  All  the  Hving  hold  together,  and  all  yield  to  the  same 
tremendous  push.  The  animal  takes  its  stand  on  the  plant,  man 
bestrides  animality,  and  the  whole  of  humanity,  in  space  and  in 
time,  is  one  immense  army  galloping  beside  and  before  and  behind 
each  of  us  in  an  overwhelming  charge  able  to  beat  down  every 
resistance  and  clear  the  most  formidable  obstacles,  perhaps  even 
death."  ^ 

*  Cf.  above,  p.  345  ff. 

2  Quoted  by  A.  O.  Lovejoy,  op.  cit.,  p.  51. 

*  Op.  cit.,  pp.  270-271. 


CHAPTER  XXV 
THE  NEW  REALISM 

I  have  been  told  that  the  population  of  Woonsocket, 
Rhode  Island,  is  made  up  of  ^'Canadian  French,  Belgian 
French  and  France  French."     Something  like  this  is  the 
case  with  realism.    There  are  the  Platonic  reaUsts,  the  Scotch 
realists,  the  German  realists  and  the  ^^new"  realists,  or  the 
real  realists.     You  may  infer  the  bias  of  the  writer  from  the 
sort  of  realism  in  which  this  exposition  culminates.     I  shall 
divide  the  topic  so  as  to  pass  in  order  from  the  common  thesis 
of  all  realists  through  a  series  of  narrowing  conceptions  until 
we  reach  the  pecuUar  conception  which  distinguishes  the 
band  of  choice  spirits  represented  by  the  authorl    We  may 
conceive  these  conceptions  to  form  a  sort  of  pyramid.     The 
broad  base  of  the  pyramid  is  the  conception  of  independence 
on  which  all  reaUsts  take  their  stand.    The  pyranud  is 
narrowed,  or  the  company  of  adherents  is  successively  re- 
duced, as  we  pass  on  to  Platonic  realism  and  the  theory  of  the 
externality  of  relations,  until  we  reach  the  summit  composed 
of  the  relatively  small  group  of  survivors  who  accept  the 
doctrines  aforesaid  and  add  to  these  the  distinguishing  con- 
ception of  the  immanence  of  consciousness.     On  this  summit 
stand  the  most  advanced  and  the  most  recent  realists,  who, 
for  the  most  part,  own  the  EngUsh  language  as  their  mother 
tongue. 

I.    THE  INDEPENDENCE   OF   THE  FACT 

It  has  been  said  that  philosophy  is  finding  bad  reasons  for 
what  men,  if  only  let  alone,  would  believe  anyway.  This 
might  be  urged  with  special  force  against  the  thesis  that  the 
object  of  knowledge  is  always  some  fact  that  stands  there 

364 


THE  NEW  REALISM 


365 


independently  of  the  knowing  of  it.  It  is  quite  true  that  this 
is  the  common-sense  view  of  the  matter.  But  in  this  par- 
ticular case  common-sense  has  already  been  undermined  by 
a  powerful  anti-realistic  philosophy,  and  has  needed  to  be  re- 
established by  reasons,  even  if  they  are  bad  ones.  Philoso- 
phy has  to  be  invoked  to  undo  what  philosophy  has  done. 

To  feel  the  importance  of  realism's  defense  of  independent 
facts,  it  is  necessary  to  recognize  the  sway  exercised  a  genera- 
tion ago  over  sophisticated  minds  by  the  counter-thesfs  of 
idealism.  Thus  Professor  Howison  spoke  of  realism  very 
much  as  we  might  now  speak  of  fetichism  or  astrology,  as 
that  *' antiquated  metaphysics,  which  talks  about  existence 
per  se,  out  of  all  relation  to  minds,  and  which,  at  any  rate  in 
respect  to  the  nature  of  Time,  received  its  quietus  in  Kant's 
Transcendental  Esthetic:'  ^  It  was  Kant's  view,  as  we  have 
seen,  that  the  known  world,  the  world  of  space,  time,  matter 
and  causality,  was  a  mind-made  world,  brought  into  being 
by  the  very  act  of  knowing  it.  What  vestiges  of  external 
fact  remained  in  Kant's  philosophy  were  speedily  removed  by 
his  successors,  and  the  world  was  brought  into  complete 
subjection  to  the  creative  intellect,  with  its  a  priori  forms 
and  its  guiding  ideals.  The  world  being  so  conceived  as  the 
creation  of  mind,  it  is  no  longer  necessary  for  the  mind  to 
observe  it  after  the  fact;  the  mind  can  now  forecast  its 
product  by  studying  its  own  constitution  and  consulting  its 
own  intentions.  The  world  is  going  to  be  what  the  mind 
needs  and  aspires  to,  and  can  thus  be  inferred  at  once  from 
an  examination  of  the  mind's  needs  and  aspirations.  If 
such  a  view  has  profound  moral  and  religious  implications, 
as  will  scarcely  be  denied,  then  the  refutation  of  the  view  will 
be  equally  fateful.  But  no  philosophy  is  governed  by  purely 
contentious  or  destructive  motives.  Let  us  look  for  some- 
thing more  positive. 

I.  The  Attitude  of  Science.  First,  in  advancing  the  thesis 
of  the  independence  of  facts,  realism  desires  to  justify  and  to 
transpose  to  philosophy,  the  attitude  of  science.  This  atti- 
tude, as  we  have  seen,  consists  essentially  in  a  renouncing  of 

*  Limits  of  Evolution,  second  edition,  p.  21. 


366 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


subjective  preference,  and  a  willingness  to  judge  the  world  as 
one  finds  it.     I  do  not  ignore  the  scientist's  use  of  hypoth- 
eses, but  insist  only  that  the  scientist  submits  his  hypothe- 
sis in  the  end  to  the  decree  of  facts.     I  reahze  that  those 
who  are  most  likely  to  find  a  thing  are  those  who  look  for  it, 
and  that  discovery  is  thus  facihtated  by  prior  hopes  and 
expectations.     But   it   is    absolutely   indispensable    to    the 
scientist  that  he  should  accept  the  defeat  of  his  expectations 
as  readily  as  their  fulfilment,  and  that  he  should  never 
confuse   his  hopes  with   the   facts.     I   do  not  ignore   the 
scientist's  desire  to  be  useful,  but  would  point  out  that  the 
scientist  has  come  by  the  gradual  purification  of  his  method 
to  see  that  he  can  be  useful  only  by  rendering  a  faithful 
report  of  things  as  they  are.     Science,  in  other  words,  is 
unmistakably  based  upon  the  assumption  that  there  is  an 
order  of  things,  —  a  collection  of  existences,  a  set  of  proper- 
ties, a  nexus  of  causes,  —  which  is  and  which  is  what  it  is, 
whether  the  mind  recognizes  it  or  not.     The  mind  can  no 
more  affect  it  by  ignoring  it  than  the  ostrich  by  sticking  his 
head  in  the  sand  can  annihilate  the  danger  that  threatens 
him.     Nor  is  this  order  of  things  affected  merely  by  wishing 
it  as  it  is  or  desiring  it  to  be  otherwise.     It  is  under  no  bonds 
to  agree  even  with  our  intellectual  aspirations.     As  it  may 
be  painful  or  injurious,  so  it  may  even  be  disorderly,  acci- 
dental or  unsystematic.     If  nature  already  agrees  with  our 
likings,  that  is  presumably  because  we  and  our  likings  have 
sprung  from  nature,  or  because  we  have  learned  to  like  what 
is  familiar  and  inevitable.     But  nature  is  very  largely  con- 
trary to  our  likings.     In  so  far  as  this  is  the  case  our  only 
solution  is  to  change  nature  through  the  action  of  our  bodies, 
which   fortunately  enable  us  to  enter  the  field  of  physical 
causes. 

Such  is,  very  briefly,  the  attitude  of  science.  What  is 
called  realism  in  art,  is  simply  to  transpose  this  attitude  to 
sensuous  and  imaginative  representation.  The  reaUst  in 
art  tries  like  the  scientist  to  forget  his  own  prejudices  and 
preferences,  to  look  steadily  even  on  that  which  repels  him; 
and  be  tries,  by  the  representations  he  creates,  to  open  the 


THE  NEW  REALISM 


367 


eyes  of  other  men  and  to  give  them  a  like  courage  to  face 
the  facts. 

Now  the  realist,  as  I  have  said,  would  like  to  have  the 
same  attitude  in  philosophy.  This  is  quite  contrary  to  a 
traditional  view  that  philosophy  is  an  indulgent  grandparent 
to  whom  one  may  turn  with  confident  assurance  from  the 
hard  and  cruel  world.     To  quote  Mr.  Russell: 

"Men  have  remembered  their  wishes,  and  have  judged  philoso- 
phies in  relation  to  their  wishes.  Driven  from  the  particular 
sciences,  the  belief  that  the  notions  of  good  and  evil  must  afford  a 
key  to  the  understanding  of  the  world  has  sought  a  refuge  in 
philosophy.  But  even  from  this  last  refuge,  if  philosophy  is  not 
to  remain  a  set  of  pleasing  dreams,  this  belief  must  be  driven  forth. 
It  is  a  commonplace  that  happiness  is  not  best  achieved  by  those 
who  seek  it  directly;  and  it  would  seem  that  the  same  is  true  of 
the  good.  In  thought,  at  any  rate,  those  who  forget  the  good  and 
evil  and  seek  only  to  know  the  facts  are  more  likely  to  achieve  good 
than  those  who  view  the  world  through  the  distorting  medium  of 
their  own  desires."  ^ 

The  realist,  then,  would  seek  in  behalf  of  philosophy  the 
same  renunciation,  the  same  rigor  of  procedure,  that  has  been 
achieved  in  science.     This  does  not  mean  that  he  would 
reduce^  philosophy    to    natural    or    physical    science.     He 
recognizes  that  the  philosopher  has  undertaken  certain  pecu- 
liar problems,  and  that  he  must  apply  himself  to  these,  with 
whatever  method  he  may  find  it  necessary  to  employ.     It 
remains  the  business  of  the  philosopher  to  attempt  a  wide 
synoptic  survey  of  the  world,  to  raise  underlying  and  ulterior 
questions,  and  in  particular  to  examine  the  cognitive  and 
moral  processes.     And  it  is  quite  true  that  for  the  present  no 
technique  at  all  comparable  with  that  of  the  exact  sciences 
is  to  be  expected.     But  where  such  technique  is  attainable, 
as  for  example  in  symbolic  logic,  the  reaHst  welcomes  it. 
And  for  the  rest  he  limits  himself  to  a  more  modest  aspira- 
tion.    He  hopes  that  philosophers  may  come  like  scientists 
to  speak  a  common  language,  to  formulate  common  problems 
and  to  appeal  to  a  common  realm  of  fact  for  their  solution. 

*  B.  Russell:  ScietUific  Method  in  Philosophy^  p,  28. 


368 


THE   PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Above  all  he  desires  to  get  rid  of  the  philosophical  monologue, 
and  of  the  lyric  and  impressionistic  mode  of  philosophizmg. 
And  in  all  this  he  is  prompted  not  by  the  will  to  destroy  but 
by  the  hope  that  philosophy  may  become  more  genuinely 
useful  as  a  source  of  enlightenment.  The  realist  assumes 
that  philosophy  is  a  kind  of  knowledge,  and  neither  a  song 
nor  a  prayer  nor  a  dream.  He  proposes,  therefore,  to  rely 
less  on  inspiration  and  more  on  observation  and  analysis. 
He  conceives  his  function  to  be  in  the  last  analysis  the  same 
as  that  of  the  scientist.  There  is  a  world  out  yonder  more  or 
less  shrouded  in  darkness,  and  it  is  important,  if  possible,  to 
light  it  up.  But  instead  of,  like  the  scientist,  focussing  the 
mind's  rays  and  throwing  this  or  that  portion  of  the  world 
into  brilhant  relief,  he  attempts  to  bring  to  light  the  outlines 
and  contour  of  the  whole,  realizing  too  well  that  in  diffusing 
so  widely  what  Uttle  Hght  he  has,  he  will  provide  only  a  very 
dim  illumination. 

2.  Values  as  Facts.  It  is  commonly  objected  that  if  the 
world  is  all  reduced  to  the  dead  level  of  fact,  there  can  no 
longer  be  any  values.  I  confess  that  this  sounds  plausible, 
though  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  I  know  what  it  means. 
There  seems  to  be  a  sort  of  dilemma  here.  We  want  values 
to  be  substantial  and  enduring  things,  but  when  they  are 
called  facts  we  at  once  recoil  because  that  appears  to  make 
them  too  gross.  We  don't  want  our  ideals  to  be  mere  ideals, 
nor  on  the  other  hand  are  we  willing  that  they  should  be 
''reduced,"  as  we  say,  to  mere  reaUties.  Let  us  see  what 
realism  has  to  contribute  to  the  solution  of  this  difficulty. 

In  discussing  this  problem  I  shall  find  it  necessary  to  assert 
quite  dogmatically  what  I  take  values  to  be,  and  I  shall  adopt 
a  view  which  many  realists,  notably  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell 
and  Mr.  G.  E.  Moore,  would  be  unwilling  to  accept.^  In  the 
elementary  sense  value  consists,  I  think,  in  interest.  If  it  so 
happens  that  a  miser  likes  gold,  then  gold  is  valuable;  I  do 
not  say  how  valuable,  but  only  that  in  some  degree,  great  or 

1  For  a  further  discussion  of  these  conflicting  realistic  views,  cf .  my  Present 
Philosophical  Tendencies,  Chap.  XIV,  §  2,  and  "The  Definition  of  Value," 
Journal  of  Philosophy,  Vol.  IX  (1914). 


THE   NEW  REALISM 


369 


little,  high  or  low,  gold  possesses  value.     But  interests,  such 
as  the  miser's  interest  in  gold,  or  the  Christian's  love  of  God, 
or  the  American's  aspiration  for  liberty,  are  facts.     They 
are  just  as  solid  and  just  as  indispensable  facts  as  the  fact 
that  the  Pacific  Ocean  washes  the  shores  of  California.     If 
one  wishes  to  know  what  is  valuable  one  must  discover  these 
facts-of -interest,  and  acknowledge  them  just  as  disinterestedly 
as  the  geographer  acknowledges  the  distribution  of  sea  and 
land.     It  is  not  in  the  least  inconsistent  with  the  professions 
of  realism  that  value-facts  should  happen  to  be  facts  regard- 
ing the  emotions  or  desires  of  men.     But  it  would  be  incon- 
sistent with  these  professions  if  one  were  to  assert  that  there 
are  no  value-facts  except  what  one  judges  so  to  be.     Instead 
of  leaving  it  to  the  knowing  mind  to  create  values  regardless 
of  what  is  presented  in  the  world  about,  realism  insists  that 
if  it  is  to  be  honest  and  enlightened,  the  mind  must  accept 
the  interests  of  other  sentient  creatures  as  it  finds  them  and 
allow  them  full  weight  in  the  formulation  of  standards  and 
policies. 

But,  one  may  ask,  what  of  the  object  of  interest?  What 
of  the  liberty  to  which  Belgium  now  aspires?  What  of  the 
lasting  peace  for  which  the  world  now  longs?  Are  not  these 
values?  And  can  they  be  said  to  be  facts?  They  are 
certainly  values;  and  they  are  facts,  as  parts  of  interests 
which  are  directed  toward  them.  It  is  a  fact  that  Belgians 
aspire  to  liberty;  and  this  actual  aspiration  must  somehow 
be  distinguished  from  other  actual  aspirations  by  the  specific 
direction  which  it  takes.  It  is  an  inalienable  feature  of  it 
that  it  should  move  toward  its  own  proper  object.  But 
though  Belgian  liberty  is  already  a  part  of  the  psychological 
fact  of  Belgian  aspiration,  it  is  not  as  yet  a  political  fact  on 
its  own  account.  This  is  what  we  mean  when  we  say  that 
the  aspiration  is  not  yet  fulfilled.  No  realist  would  propose 
to  deny  unfulfilled  aspirations.  On  the  contrary  he  would 
wish  carefully  to  distinguish  the  sense  in  which  they  are  facts 
and  the  sense  in  which  they  are  not. 

The  importance  of  this  appears  when  we  consider  the  third 
sense  in  which  the  actuality  of  values  may  be  regarded.    As 


370 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


we  all  confidently  believe,  the  day  will  come  when  what  the 
Belgians  now  aspire  to  will  have  been  attained.  Then  what 
was  only  part  of  the  fact  of  aspiration  will  become  an  in- 
dependent fact,  freed  from  dependence  on  aspiration,  and 
requiring  to  be  taken  account  of  as  a  new  political  force. 
But  in  order  to  pass  from  the  first  stage  to  the  second,  from 
aspiration  to  attainment,  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance  that 
the  two  stages  should  be  rigorously  distinguished.  The 
man  who  mistakes  the  one  for  the  other,  who  allows  the 
ardor  or  vividness  of  his  aspiration  to  invest  its  object  with 
the  dignity  of  accomplished  fact,  will  be  the  last  person  in  the 
world  to  realize  his  aspiration.  This  is  only  a  painstaking, 
and  I  fear,  obscure,  restatement  of  the  popular  conviction 
that  an  efficient  idealism  needs  a  good  dash  of  wholesome 
reaHsm.  In  order  to  get  a  thing  which  you  want,  it  is  highly 
important  to  know  when  in  point  of  fact  you  have  it,  and 
when  in  point  of  fact  you  have  it  not. 

Now  I  suspect  that  at  the  back  of  the  objection  to  the 
emphasis  on  facts  there  lies  the  vicious  impulse  to  allow  our 
interests  to  interfere  with  our  judgment.  There  is  a  philoso- 
phy, whose  acquaintance  we  have  already  made,  that  pro- 
poses to  define  the  real  world  as  the  already  consummated 
fulfilment  of  human  aspirations.  The  world  is  conceived  as 
the  ideal-real,  being  at  one  and  the  same  time  what  we  want 
it  to  be  and  what  we  judge  it  to  be.  But  this  error  is  just  as 
flagrant  and  just  as  fatal  on  the  grand  cosmic  scale  as  on  the 
smaller  personal  or  poUtical  scale.  He  who  judges  the  world 
to  be  what  he  aspires  to  have  it  become,  is  the  last  man  in  the 
world  to  act  effectively  for  the  world's  betterment.  A  sound 
religious  idealism,  Uke  a  sound  personal  or  poHtical  idealism, 
must  be  associated  with  disillusionment  —  with  a  realistic 
acknowledgment  of  things  as  they  are.  Such  a  disillusion- 
ment in  no  way  forbids  the  hope  that  they  may  be  otherwise, 
and  is  indispensable  to  the  firm  and  patient  adoption  of  the 
means  by  which  they  may  become  otherwise. 


i 


THE  NEW  REALISM 


n.    PLATONIC  REALISM 


371 


Many  realists  who  would  acknowledge  the  independence 
of  the  particular  facts  of  nature  or  history  would  decline  to 
go  further  and  attribute,  as  Plato  did,  a  like  independence 
to  the  abstract  objects  of  the  thinking  and  idealizing  facul- 
ties.    Most  modern  realists,  however,  would  go  with  Plato 
a  part  of  the  way.    They  would  not  agree  that  such  abstract 
objects  are  the  only  ultimate  facts,  nor  would  they  include 
among  such  facts  the  objects  of  cognitive,  moral  or  aesthetic 
aspiration.     They  would  accept,  in  other  words,  only  the 
mathematical  and  logical  part  of  Platonic  realism.     Thus 
Plato  would  say  that  there  is  an  absolute  truth,  an  absolute 
good  and  an  absolute  beauty,  because  we  conceive  these  ds 
ideals;  and  he  would  say  that  these  absolutes  or  perfections 
have  a  clearer  title  to  being  than  the  particular  and  limited 
values  of  this  world.     Both  of  these  contentions  the  modern 
realist  would  reject.     But  Plato  would  also  say  that  the 
properties  of  the  mathematical  triangle,  or  the  necessities 
of  logical  implication,  are  actual ;  and  in  so  far  as  this  does 
not  prejudice  the  equal  actuality  of  particular  physical  or 
social  systems,  the  modern  realist  would  agree  with  him. 

This  modern  and  more  limited  version  of  Platonic  realism 
rests  on  the  following  simple  consideration.  The  mathe- 
matician and  the  logician  both  discover  that  certain  implica- 
tions or  conclusions  follow  necessarily  from  certain  premises. 
Thus  if  X  is  greater  than  y,  and  y  is  greater  than  2,  then  x  is 
greater  than  2.  It  is  an  abstract  or  universal  truth,  because 
it  holds  for  all  particular  cases  of  x,  y,  and  2;  and  would  hold 
even  if  there  were  no  particular  cases  at  all.  It  is  really  a 
truth  not  about  any  individual  existent  thing,  but  about  the 
general  relation  "  greater  than."  This  is  sometimes  expressed 
by  saying  that  ''greater  than,"  is  a  transitive  relation. 
Furthermore,  this  property  of  the  relation  is  quite  independ- 
ent of  what  we  may  think  or  will  it  to  be.  It  is  just  as 
stubborn  a  fact,  just  as  free  from  subjection  to  human 
caprice  or  opinion,  as  the  particular  fact  that  the  sun  is 
greater  than  the  earth.     It  is  a  fact  that,  like  physical  facts, 


372 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


has  to  be  taken  account  of  and  accepted  as  it  is  by  anyone 
who  wishes  to  be  well-adapted  to  this  universe. 

Now  this  strain  of  Platonic  realism  has  several  implica- 
tions of  emotional  and  practical  significance.  In  the  first 
place  it  contradicts  the  materiaUstic  metaphysics.  If  the 
mathematical  and  logical  forms  are  genuine  properties  of  the 
real  world,  then  it  becomes  impossible  to  claim  that  the  real 
world  is  composed  exclusively  of  matter  or  any  purely  cor- 
poreal substance.  Indeed  it  is  equally  contradictory  to  the 
alternative  type  of  monism  which  affirms  that  the  real  world 
is  composed  exclusively  of  spiritual  or  mental  substance;  or 
to  a  dualism  which  would  propose  to  divide  the  world  between 
corporeal  and  mental  substance.  It  means  that  at  least  a 
part  of  the  world  is  neither  corporeal  nor  mental,  but  "neu- 
tral" in  substance. 

In  the  second  place,  this  strain  of  Platonism  acknowledges 
the  rights  of  the  intellect.  This  faculty  cannot  now  be 
thought  of  as  purely  instrumental.  Conception,  according 
to  realism,  is,  Uke  perception,  a  mode  of  apprehending  the 
inherent  nature  of  things.  The  intellect  has  its  own  field, 
which  it  may  explore  in  precisely  the  same  spirit  of  discovery 
as  that  which  actuates  the  geographer  or  the  astronomer. 
This  has  led  some  realists,  like  Mr.  Russell,  to  the  view  that 
in  the  intellectual  contemplation  of  the  realm  of  logic  and 
mathematics,  man  may  find  his  highest,  his  most  tranquil 
and  self-sufficient  life.  ^  For  this  realm  lies  beyond  the  flight 
of  time  and  the  tumult  of  discordant  passions.  The  truths 
of  reason  are  the  truths  that  endure,  unaffected  by  the  inci- 
dents of  nature  and  history.  He  who  by  his  reason  dwells 
in  this  realm  can  never  know  defeat  or  disappointment. 
Even  if  he  does  not  adopt  this  extremer  form  of  the  intel- 
leetualistic  cult,  the  realist  will  in  any  case  escape  that  sense 
of  dissolution  and  perpetual  flux  which  must  haunt  the 
philosopher  who  identifies  reality  exclusively  with  the  passing 
events  of  the  temporal  process. 

1  Cf.  above,  pp.  41-42. 


( 


THE  NEW  REALISM 


in.    THE  EXTERNALITY  OF  RELATIONS 


373 


The  new  realist,  like  the  voluntarists  and  pragmatists, 
accepts  the  manyness  or  plurality  of  things  as  an  ultimate 
fact:  ultimate,  that  is,  not  in  the  sense  that  it  is  desirable, 
but  rather  in  the  sense  that  it  describes  the  world  as  we  now 
find  it.  The  realist  accepts  the  practical  implications  of 
pluralism,  but  these  practical  implications  are  not  as  with 
the  voluntarists  and  pragmatists  the  motive  which  prompts 
him  to  adopt  the  view.  He  is  a  pluralist  for  theoretical 
reasons,  and  reasons  of  a  peculiarly  technical  sort  that  we 
cannot  in  this  context  properly  justify.  I  can  do  no  more 
than  state  them  in  the  briefest  possible  manner. 

The  realist  believes  that  relations  are  external  to  the  terms 
which  they  unite.  He  believes  that  only  such  a  view  of  the 
matter  is  consistent  with  the  results  of  analysis,  which  is  only 
another  name  for  a  careful  and  discriminating  examination 
of  things.  A  fact,  he  believes,  is  built  up  out  of  parts,  each 
of  which  has  a  specific  character  of  its  own  which  it  could 
retain  if  transposed  to  another  fact.  Thus  the  fact  that  the 
sun  is  greater  than  the  earth  contains  the  relation  ^'greater 
than,"  which  has,  as  we  have  seen,  its  own  peculiar  proper- 
ties, and  which  retains  these  same  properties  in  other  facts 
such  as  the  fact  that  the  earth  is  greater  than  the  moon. 
The  fact  that  the  sun  is  greater  than  the  earth  also  contains 
the  term  *^sun,"  with  its  own  peculiar  properties,  which  it 
retains  in  the  further  fact  that  the  sun  was  visible  at  twelve 
o'clock  yesterday.  In  other  words  diverse  facts  contain 
common  constituents.  To  say  that  these  constituents  are 
external  to  one  another  means  simply  that  they  are  not  so 
bound  up  with  one  another  in  any  one  fact,  that  they  cannot 
be  transposed  without  being  destroyed.  They  do  not  belong 
exclusively  to  one  fact,  but  are  interchangeable. 

The  realist  does  not,  of  course,  deny  that  facts  may  be 
causally  connected.  Thus  the  fact  that  the  earth  revolves 
about  the  sun  is  causally  connected  with  the  fact  that  the 
sun  is  greater  than  the  earth.  These  two  facts  are  as  it 
happens  constituents  of  a  more  complex  causal  fact.    But 


374 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


each  of  the  constituent  facts  is  capable  of  appearing  also  in 
other  complex  facts.  Even  the  causal  relation  cannot  be 
said  to  merge  into  or  possess  the  terms  which  it  unites,  and 
the  other  complex  relations  in  which  these  terms  may  also 
appear  may  be  relatively  disjunctive,  non-causal  relations, 
such  as  difference  or  simultaneity. 

Now  I  know  that  all  this  will  strike  you  as  an  elaboration 
of  the  obvious.  But  like  the  more  general  reaUstic  thesis  of 
factual  independence,  it  derives  importance  from  its  denial 
of  a  contrary  view,  which  although  it  cannot  be  said  to  have 
any  popular  vogue  has  been  used  as  a  premise  from  which  to 
argue  very  far-reaching  principles  of  political  policy  and 
religious  faith.  I  refer  to  the  view  with  which  we  have 
already  met  in  our  study  of  absolute  ideaHsm,  the  view  that 
all  relations  are  internal  or  vital  relations,  and  that  all 
elements,  therefore,  derive  their  nature  from  the  organic 
whole  which  they  compose.  That  view  impUes  that  in 
understanding  and  evaluating  the  world  we  must  work  from 
the  whole  to  the  part.  The  counter-thesis  of  realism  impHes 
that  we  must  work  rather  from  the  part  to  the  whole;  that 
wholes  are  to  be  regarded  not  as  indivisible  unities,  but  rather 
as  collections  or  sums  of  the  natures  and  values  possessed  by 

their  parts. 

We  have  already  alluded  to  one  -"nciportant  consequence 
of  this  view.  It  makes  it  possible  to  regard  the  evil  in  the 
world  as  a  separable  component,  which  may  be  isolated  both 
in  our  judgment  of  it  and  in  our  action  on  it.  We  may 
condemn  it  without  condemning  the  world  as  a  whole,  and 
we  may  destroy  it  without  destroying  the  world  as  a  whole. 
Another  consequence  to  which  I  shall  make  only  a  passing 
allusion  is  this.  If  the  world  were  an  organic  whole  we  could 
not  know  anything  of  it  without  knowing  all  of  it.  Short 
of  a  grasp  of  the  indivisible  totality,  we  should  lack  the  key 
to  the  understanding  of  any  of  its  parts.  The  actual  advance- 
meiit^f  knowledge,  however,  beUes  this;  for  in  science  we 
advance  from  part  to  part,  knowing  as  we  go.  In  so  far, 
then,  as  philosophy  adopts  the  principle  of  organic  unity, 
it  will  always  tend  to  discredit  science.    But  since  what  we 


THE  NEW  REALISM 


375 


do  profess  to  know  must  be  condemned  as  fragmentary,  and 
since  we  cannot  leap  at  once  to  omniscience,  we  are  left 
without  any  accredited  knowledge  at  all,  except  the  barren 
assertion  that  the  world  is  an  organic  whole.  The  perpetual 
reiteration  of  this  principle  of  *' coherence,"  *^  synthetic 
unity,"  ''concrete  universaUty,"  etc.,  is  as  every  reader  knows 
the  most  characteristic  feature  of  the  literature  of  idealism. 
But  there  is  a  further  consequence  of  pluralism  to  which  I 
wish  to  give  special  emphasis.  I  have  expressed  the  opinion 
that  the  elementary  value-fact  is  the  actual  interest  of  a 
sentient  being.  Adopting  the  pluralistic  principle  we  may 
now  pass  on  to  the  thesis  that  these  elementary  interests 
enter  into  complex  aggregates  in  which  they  retain  their 
identity,  and  in  which  they  combine  to  form  a  sum  of  value. 
The  realist  is  not  prevented  from  admitting  the  existence  of 
larger  corporate  interests  where  he  finds  them,  but  he  is 
under  no  logical  compulsion  to  affirm  them  where  he  does  not 
find  them;  and  when  he  does  find  them  he  sees  them  to  be 
made  up  of  many  component  interests,  each  being  a  value- 
fact  in  its  own  right  quite  independent  of  the  whole  into 
which  it  enters.  But  we  have  now  already  reached  familiar 
practical  issues.  The  absolutist  will  say  that  the  individual 
man  with  his  individual  needs  and  desires  has  no  value  save 
what  he  derives  from  the  whole.  If  he  is  valuable  at  all  it  is 
because  he  plays  a  part  in  the  state  or  in  the  Absolute  Life. 
This  is  his  only  excuse  for  being.  But  the  pluralist,  on  the 
other  hand,  will  say  that  there  is  an  inherent  and  ultimate 
value  in  the  individual  which  is  in  no  way  derived  from  either 
the  state  or  the  Absolute  or  any  other  corporate  entity,  and 
which  has  to  be  taken  account  of  in  any  estimate  of  such  a 
corporate  entity.  Indeed  the  pluralist  will  ordinarily  go 
further.  He  will  contend  that  the  state  or  the  larger  totaHty 
of  life  is  not,  properly  speaking,  an  interest  at  all,  but  a  collec- 
tion of  interests.  In  that  case  it  will  have  no  value  save 
such  as  it  derives  from  the  interests  which  compose  it.  The 
state  and  even  God,  if  by  God  we  mean  the  totality  of  life, 
will  then  be  judged  by  the  degree  to  which  the  whole  provides 
for  the  interests  of  the  members. 


376 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


This  I  take  it,  is  the  unconscious  philosophy  which  under- 
lies individualism,  social  democracy  and  humanitanamsm. 
No  one  would  be  more  surprised  than  the  average  exponent 
of  these  creeds  to  learn  that  they  had  anything  to  do  with  so 
recondite  a  technicaUty  as  the  theory  of  the  externahty  of 
relations  But  such  is  in  fact  the  case.  A  logical  difference 
is  a  profound  difference,  and  the  profounder  the  difference 
the  greater  the  divergence  when  one  reaches  the  apphcation. 
The  view  that  wholes  own  and  condition  their  parts  is  the 
logical  premise  of  pantheism  or  of  the  doctrine  of  the  mf  alhble 
state-personaUty.  On  the  other  hand,  the  view  that  parts 
make  up  and  condition  the  whole  is  the  logical  premise  of 
the  view  which  refuses  to  be  diverted  by  doubtful  or  fictitious 
corporate  entities  from  the  particular  man  with  his  actually 
felt  interests. 

IV.    THE  IMMANENCE   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS 

That  which  pecuUarly  distinguishes  the  narrower  group  of 
American  reaUsts  is  the  view  that  consciousness  is  homo- 
geneous and  interactive  with  its  environment.    This  view 
is  to  be  distinguished  from  two  other  views  which  are 
commonly  thought  to  afford  a  better  basis  for  the  moral  and 
religious  Ufe.    We  have  already  met  with  both  of  these 
opposing  views,  but  I  shaU  restate  them  briefly  in  order  to 
bring  the  opposition  into  clearer  reUef .    According  to  one  of 
these  views,  which  we  have  designated  as  the  spiritual 
philosophy,  consciousness  is  coextensive  with  the  totaUty  of 
things:   everything  is  consciousness.     Reahsm,  on  the  other 
hand,  asserts  with  mundane  common-sense  that  conscious- 
ness is  only  one  kind  of  thing  among  many.     It  is  homo- 
geneous with  the  remainder  of  the  world,  in  the  sense  that  it 
is  composed  ultimately  of  the  same  elements.     But  the 
particular  combination  of  elements  which  distinguishes  con- 
sciousness differs  from  other  forms  of  combination,  such  as 
bodies  or  mathematical  systems.     According  to  the  second 
of  the  opposing  views,  which  is  commonly  called  ^'duahsm, 
consciousness  is  a  peculiar  substance,  absolutely  distinct,  for 
example,  from  corporeal  substance,  and  incapable  of  entenng 


THE  NEW  REALISM 


377 


into  any  commerce  with  it.  Realism,  on  the  other  hand, 
asserts  that  consciousness  differs  from  bodies  very  much  as 
one  bodily  system  differs  from  another.  It  has  its  own 
modus  operandij^  which  distinguishes  it  from  the  merely 
mechanical,  but  it  exists  upon  the  same  plane  with  bodies 
and  is  therefore  capable  both  of  affecting  and  of  being 
affected  by  them.  Before  pursuing  these  comparisons 
further,  let  me  elaborate  this  realistic  view. 

Consciousness  is  a  two-sided  affair.  On  the  one  hand 
there  is  what  is  commonly  called  the  content  or  the  object, 
such  as  percepts,  ideas  or  memories.  The  theory  of  the 
immanence  of  consciousness  means  that  these  contents  or 
objects  are  parts  of  the  environment,  borrowed  by  the  mind, 
but  not  exclusively  appropriated  and  owned  by  it.  Thus 
according  to  realism  my  present  perceptions  are  parts  of  this 
room,  united  with  my  mind  in  so  far  as  I  look  at  them,  touch 
them  or  Usten  to  them,  but  without  prejudice  to  their  other 
relations.  Thus  this  desk,  in  so  far  as  I  grasp  it,  is  brought 
within  the  circle  of  my  mind's  contents;  but  it  does  not  on 
that  account  cease  to  be  on  the  platform,  or  to  be  attracted 
toward  the  centre  of  the  earth,  any  more  than  one  of  you  by 
becoming  a  university  student  ceases  to  be  a  Californian,  or 
to  weigh  one  hundred  and  fifty  pounds.  Mind  and  the  sur- 
rounding world  interpenetrate  and  overlap  as  the  university 
interpenetrates  and  overlaps  the  other  systems  and  groupings 
from  which  its  components  are  drawn. 

The  other  side  of  consciousness  is  what  is  commonly  called 
'^subject'*  or  activity  of  mind.  It  consists  of  the  acts  of 
perceiving,  thinking,  remembering,  etc.  The  realistic  theory 
of  immanence  would  regard  this  too  as  homogeneous  with  its 
surroundings.  Spirit,  if  we  wish  to  retain  the  term,  is  not 
a  discontinuous  substance,  which  can  be  discovered  only  by 
the  unique  method  of  introspection  —  by  the  inward  aware- 
ness which  each  spiritual  being  has  exclusively  of  himself. 
Spirit  is  one  of  the  many  kinds  of  things  that  may  be  found 

1  The  author  has  attempted  to  describe  this  in  an  article  entitled  "  Docility 
and  Purpose,"  Psychological  Review,  January,  1918.  Cf.  E.  B.  Holt:  The 
Freudian  Wish,  Chap.  II  and  Appendix. 


378 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


by  any  observer  in  the  same  field  of  observable  experience 
with  mountains,  rivers  and  stars.  It  is  a  peculiar  combina- 
tion of  elements  with  a  peculiar  set  of  properties.  Some  of 
you  will  have  heard  of  what  is  called  *' behaviorism ''  in 
psychology.  This  movement,  with  which  American  realists 
are  in  accord,  would  go  back  to  the  old  Aristotelian  view  that 
we  mean  by  mind  only  the  peculiar  way  in  which  a  living 
organism  endowed  with  a  central  nervous  system  behaves. 
To  study  mind,  according  to  this  view,  we  ought  to  watch 
such  an  organism  and  observe  or  measure  what  it  does  when 
it  is  confronted  now  with  this  and  now  with  that  set  of 
external  stimuli.  This  is  the  way,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in 
which  the  minds  of  animals,  or  of  children,  or  of  primitive 
races,  or  of  the  abnormal,  have  always  been  studied.  Be- 
haviorism would  simply  favor  this  method  for  general 
psychological  purposes,  including  the  study  of  the  mind  of 
the  normal  human  adult. 

Now  put  these  two  sides  of  mind  together.  There  results 
the  view  that  consciousness  is  a  mode  of  interaction  within 
one  homogeneous  world  —  an  excerpt  of  things,  which  a 
cerebrally  equipped  organism  selects  for  its  special  purposes 
from  its  surrounding  environment.  Let  us  compare  the  prac- 
tical consequences  of  such  a  view  with  those  which  follow 
from  duaUsm  or  spirituaUsm.  Dualism  professes  to  deliver 
consciousness  from  the  taint  of  materiaUty,  but  only  at  the 
cost  of  its  impotence.  Consciousness  remains  in  the  world, 
but  is  entirely  out  of  touch  with  it.  Its  objects  are  its  own 
states,  and  its  activity  being  of  a  purely  spiritual  kind,  cannot 
have  the  slightest  effect  on  the  physical  forces  which  govern 
nature.  The  consistent  outcome  of  dualism  is  a  moral 
subjectivism,  in  which  a  man  confines  his  efforts  to  arranging 
his  own  ideas  in  his  own  mind;  and  gets  what  comfort  he 
can  from  the  belief  that  thinking,  even  if  it  makes  no  differ- 
ence to  the  course  of  events,  is  the  most  exalted  and  dignified 
of  vocations. 

SpirituaUsm,  like  realism,  proclaims  the  homogeneity  of 
mind  with  its  surroundings,  and  therefore  delivers  it  from 
this  impotence.    In   their   common   rejection   of   dualism 


THE  NEW  REALISM 


379 


spiritualism  and  realism  have  a  common  bond.  *  But  spirit- 
uaHsm  introduces  new  practical  difficulties.  If  the  attempt 
is  made,  as  by  Bergson,  the  panpsychists  and  the  personal 
idealists,  to  reduce  the  world  to  forms  of  consciousness  such 
as  mortals  feel  within  themselves,  then  there  is  nothing  left 
to  act  on.  In  order  to  provide  for  the  natural  environment 
it  is  necessary  to  introduce  a  miracle  by  which  spirit  is 
** objectified  '*  or  '^materialized."  If,  on  the  other  hand,  as 
with  the  absolute  idealists,  the  universal  spirit  is  identified 
with  the  objective  order  of  things,  then  the  terms  "spirit," 
'^ consciousness,"  "mind"  and  the  rest  cease  to  have  any 
distinctive  meaning.  There  is  little  comfort  in  the  assurance 
that  "all  is  spirit,"  provided  "spirit  "  has  come  to  mean  that 
very  external  order  which  we  had  formerly  regarded  as  the 
antithesis  of  spirit. 

In  short  what  is  needed  for  the  justification  of  a  resolute 
morality  and  the  sober  hopes  of  a  religion  of  action,  is  a 
world  in  which  consciousness  in  the  specific  and  limited  sense 
may  operate  effectively,  and  in  which  there  is  therefore  a 
chance  of  its  bringing  the  world  into  accord  with  its  interests. 
Realism,  so  far  as  I  know,  is  the  only  philosophy  to  provide 
such  a  world.  For  it  recognizes  the  distinctness  of  con- 
sciousness, while  at  the  same  time  admitting  it  into  the 
natural  world  as  a  genuine  dynamic  agent. 

It  is  unnecessary  for  me  further  to  elaborate  the  moral  and 
religious  consequences  of  realism ;  for  they  do  not  differ  mate- 
rially from  the  moral  and  religious  consequences  of  pluralism, 
as  these  have  already  been  expounded  above.  Realism  is 
individualistic,  democratic  and  humanitarian  in  its  ethics. 
It  is  theistic  and  meUoristic  in  its  religion.  Realism  is  essen- 
tially a  philosophy  which  refuses  to  deceive  or  console  itself 
by  comfortable  illusions.  It  prefers  to  keep  its  eyes  open. 
But  it  is  neither  cynical  nor  embittered.  It  distinguishes 
the  good  from  the  evil,  and  seeks  to  promote  it,  not  with  a 
sense  of  assured  triumph,  but  rather  with  the  confidence  that 

*  For  an  acknowledgment  of  this  kinship  on  the  part  of  absolute  idealism, 
cf.  Bosanquet,  "Realism  and  Metaphysic,"  Philosophical  Review^  Vol.  XXVI 

(1917). 


38o 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


springs  from  resolution.     It  is  of  this  chivalrous  spirit  that 
Sabatier  speaks  when  he  says: 

*'The  reUgious  man  not  only  affirms  what  is  good,  he  becomes  its 
soldier,  and  despite  all  defeats,  he  predicts  its  triumph  In  the 
midst  of  ruins  he  catches  sight  of  the  future  city,  which  he  bui  ds 
in  advance,  ideally,  before  he  has  yet  power  to  bmld  it  m  reahty. 
The  great  moments  of  his  life  are  not  those  in  which  he  pauses  to 
rest  and  enjoy  the  verities  achieved,  but  those  in  which  he  anxiously 
sets  out  again  on  a  new  stage,  because  the  mysterious  voice  has 
said,  '  Get  thee  out  of  thy  country  and  from  thy  kmdred,  unto  a 
land  that  I  will  show  thee.'  "  ^ 

But  realism,  as  I  understand  it,  would  prefer  to  be  more 
articulate,  somewhat  closer  to  life  than  this.  It  would 
connect  the  ^'future  city''  with  the  present  hopes  and 
struggles  of  mankind,  as  Mr.  Wells  does  when  he  defines  what 
he  calls  the  ''world-kingdom  of  God." 

"This  kingdom  is  to  be  a  peaceful  and  co-ordinated  activity  of  all 
mankmd  upon  certain  divine  ends.  These,  we  conceive,^  are  first, 
the  maintenance  of  the  racial  life;  secondly,  the  exploration  of  the 
external  being  of  nature  as  it  is  and  as  it  has  been,  that  is  to  say 
history  and  science;  thirdly,  that  exploration  of  inherent  human 
possibiUty  which  is  art;  fourthly,  that  clarification  of  thought  and 
knowledge  which  is  pMlosophy;  and  finally,  the  progressive  en- 
largement and  development  of  the  racial  life  under  these  hghts,  so 
that  God  may  work  through  a  contmually  better  body  of  humamty 
and  through  better  and  better  equipped  minds,  that  he  and  our 
race  may  increase  for  ever,  working  unendingly  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  the  powers  of  fife  and  the  mastery  of  the  bUnd  forces  of 
matter  throughout  the  deeps  of  space."  2 

1  Paul  Sabatier:  France  To-day,  Its  Religious  Orientation,  p.  21. 

2  God  the  Invisible  King,  pp.  107-108. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 
THE  PHILOSOPHY   OF   NATIONALITY 

It  is  a  commonplace  of  history  that  the  growth  of  na- 
tionalism is  one  of  the  great  dominating  features  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century.  It  began  in  the  Napoleonic  era  with  the 
Spanish  and  Prussian  uprisings,  received  a  fresh  impetus  in 
1830  and  again  in  1848,  and  culminated  after  1859  in  the 
formation  of  the  nationalized  states  of  Italy  and  Germany. 
Since  the  opening  of  the  new  century  there  has  been  scarcely 
any  abatement  of  this  movement,  despite  the  strong  counter- 
movement  of  internationalism  and  cosmopolitanism.  Be- 
fore the  war  there  had  already  been  great  revivals  of  national 
feeling  among  the  Slavic  peoples  and  in  France,  and  since 
the  war  this  feeling  has  everywhere  been  intensified  by  the 
struggles,  sufferings  and  efforts  which  the  war  has  produced. 
A  topic  so  vast  and  so  intricately  interwoven  with  every 
aspect  of  modern  European  history  must  in  the  main  fall 
outside  the  scope  of  this  study.  But  some  brief  considera- 
tion of  it  forms  a  necessary  introduction  to  any  such  survey 
of  national  traits  and  ideals  as  that  which  I  shall  undertake 
in  the  chapters  that  follow.^ 

I.    NATIONAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 

It  is  now  very  generally  recognized  that  nationality  is 
essentially  psychological.  Nationality  is  a  state  of  mind. 
But  we  shall  understand  it  all  the  better  if  we  consider  it  in 
the  light  of  certain  physical  and  institutional  forces  with 
which  it  is  closely  associated,  and  with  which  it  may  readily 
be  confused. 

I.  The  Nation  and  the  Race.  It  is  perfectly  obvious  that 
nations  cannot  be  identified  with  races,  or  defined  ethnologi- 

1  Cf.  the  author's  discussion  of  "The  Tolerant  Nation,"  in  The  Free  Man 
and  the  Soldier,  Charies  Scribner's  Sons,  iqi6. 

381 


382 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


cally.  Perhaps  the  best  proof  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the 
fact  that  when  new  nations  arise,  this  does  not  at  all  imply 
the  birth  of  new  races.  That  which  happened  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  and  to  which  I  have  just  referred,  was  not 
an  ethnic  event  of  breeding  or  migration.  It  was,  as  we  say, 
the  rise  and  diffusion  of  an  idea.  Societies  where  they  had 
already  long  existed,  and  being  of  the  same  stock  with  no 
change  of  hereditary  nature,  began  to  feel  themselves  unified 
in  a  new  way.  The  whole  trend  of  thought  in  ethnology  is 
against  the  idea  of  pure  races;  and  even  such  racial  divisions 
as  are  admitted  fail  utterly  to  coincide  with  national  divisions. 
It  is  said  that  there  are  three  racial  types  in  Europe :  the  short 
and  dark  Mediterranean  or  Iberian  race;  the  Teutonic  or 
Nordic  race  which  is  long-headed,  tall  and  blond;  and  the 
Celtic  or  Alpine  race  which  is  round-headed,  stocky  and  in- 
termediate in  coloration.  ^  These  racial  types  extend  across 
Europe  from  East  to  West  in  horizontal  zones,  and  there  is 
none  of  the  great  nations  that  does  not  contain  all  three  of 

them. 

A  further  proof  that  nationaUty  is  a  non-racial  unity  is  to 
be  found  in  the  fact  that  racial  purity  is  a  claim,  a  myth,  in 
which  a  new  national  consciousness  expresses  itself.  Thus 
pan-Germanists  beginning  with  Fichte  invented  the  idea  of 
the  aboriginal  German  stock,  and  resurrected  the  obscure 
and  discredited  opinions  of  the  French  ethnologist  Gobineau 
to  suit  their  purpose.  The  outstanding  fact  is  that  certain 
societies  have  come  so  to  feel  their  soUdarity  that  they 
naturally  think  of  themselves  as  one  family  with  a  common 
ancestry,  and  develop  a  nationaUzed  ethnology  to  justify 
themselves.  We  in  America  have  not  yet  had  the  hardiness 
to  do  this,  though  there  are  traces  of  it  in  our  vague  allusions 
to  the  Puritan  stock  which  sprang  from  the  freight  borne  to 
these  shores  by  that  national  ark,  the  Mayflower,  We  are 
too  vividly  aware  of  our  multi-racial  composition  to  press 
the  point.     In  the  *'new  nationalism''  which  has  been  so 

1  This  appears  to  be  the  generally  accepted  view.  Cf .  P.  Chahners  Mitchell, 
Evolution  and  the  War;  W.  Z.  Ripley,  The  Races  of  Europe,  Chap.  VI;  J.  Hol- 
land Rose,  Nationality  in  Modern  History,  pp.  138  ff. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATIONALITY 


383 


effectively  cultivated  in  the  last  few  years  and  months,  it  is 
clearly  recognized  that  the  great  glory  of  American  na- 
tionality lies  in  its  power  to  bring  men  of  every  racial  ex- 
traction into  a  unity  of  common  ideas  and  sentiments.  It  is 
not  to  be  denied  that  common  descent  provides  one  of  the 
conditions  most  favorable  to  the  development  of  a  national 
consciousness.  But  even  where  there  is  a  large  amount  of 
racial  homogeneity,  this  in  itself  does  not  constitute  nation- 
ality until  it  is  recognized  and  felt;  and  if  it  is  recognized  and 
felt,  then  it  is  not  at  all  necessary  that  it  should  be  a  fact. 
And  this  biological  factor,  even  as  a  claim  or  myth,  has  come 
to  play  a  smaller  and  smaller  role  as  nations  have  risen  in  the 
scale  of  historical  development.  As  a  recent  writer  has 
expressed  it, 

"Above  ethnical  nationalities  there  are  political  nationalities, 
formed  by  choice  (one  may  say),  rooted  in  love  of  liberty,  in  the 
cult  of  a  glorious  past,  in  accord  of  interests,  in  similarity  of  moral 
ideas  and  of  all  that  forms  the  intellectual  life."  ^ 

2.  The  Territorial  Aspect.  As  the  racial  principle  has 
declined  in  importance,  the  territorial  principle  has  neces- 
sarily assumed  a  greater  prominence.  Without  contiguity 
it  is  impossible  that  any  society  should  come  to  be  of  one 
mind.  A  nation  must  undoubtedly  be  one  neighborhood 
with  interior  lines  of  communication  that  unite  its  mem- 
bers more  closely  with  one  another  than  with  outsiders.  In 
times  of  peace  nationality  tends  to  shade  off  at  the  border. 
In  so  far,  for  example,  as  Americans  living  on  the  Eastern 
seaboard  have  been  more  intimately  in  contact  ^ith  Europe 
than  with  the  Mississippi  Valley  they  have  tended  to  lose 
their  nationality.  A  nation  must  form  a  more  or  less  segre- 
gated group  within  which  the  same  models  are  imitated. 
The  national  group,  in  other  words,  must  be  more  inter- 
imitative  than  extra-imitative. 

Territorial  unity  brings  with  it  also  a  moral  unity.  The 
moral  problem  is  the  conflict  of  interests.  This  is  largely 
an  effect  of  proximity.     Individuals  living  together  must 

^  Laveleye:  Le  Gouvernement  et  la  Democratie  (1891),  I,  p.  58. 


384 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


find  a  way  of  living  together  peacefully  and  co-operatively. 
Therefore  they  must  live  under  one  code,  one  law  and  set  of 
institutions.  While  a  man  may,  or  could  until  yesterday, 
afford  to  live  in  a  state  of  nature  with  a  man  across  the  sea, 
he  must  at  once  reach  a  settlement  and  a  good  understanding 
with  the  man  across  the  street. 

Those  who  inhabit  the  same  territory  are  also  united  by 
their  common  physical  environment.  They  have  the  same 
hardships  to  fear,  and  the  same  resources  to  exploit.  They 
are  always  in  some  degree  in  the  position  of  fellow-pioneers 
or  partners  in  a  common  struggle  with  nature.  There  are 
also  the  common  scenes  and  the  common  landmarks,  en- 
deared to  all  aUke  by  association  and  familiarity. 

But  though  a  common  territory  conditions  nationality,  it 
is  evidently  not  in  itself  a  sufficient  condition.  A  herd  of 
buffalos  grazing  in  the  same  prairie  are  not  a  nation  unless 
we  suppose  them  to  be  aware  of  what  they  have  in  common. 
So  a  man  who  is  quite  insensible  to  the  common  land  which 
he  shares  with  others  is  as  much  without  a  country  as  though 
he  were  in  exile.  Again  it  is  clear  that  nationality  is  a  mode 
of  consciousness,  favored  it  is  true  by  a  common  heredity  or 
a  common  physical  environment,  but  not  at  all  the  same 
thing  as  these.  Furthermore,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  the 
territory  of  a  great  nation,  such,  for  example,  as  our  own,  con- 
tains almost  every  variety  of  climate,  soil,  natural  resources 
and  landscape;  and  that  the  territory  and  neighborhood  in 
which  a  man  lives  tends  therefore  to  locaUze  him  even  more 
perhaps  than  to  nationalize  him.  Nationality  requires  that 
the  individual  shall  overcome  this  narrowing  influence  of  the 
immediate  physical  environment  by  his  imagination  and  his 
ideas.  The  Maine  lumberman  can  be  united  with  the  cattle- 
man of  Texas  or  the  orange-grower  of  California  only  by 
common  interests,  sentiments  and  institutions. 

Finally,  if  nationaUty  were  merely  a  matter  of  territory  it 
would  be  impossible  to  explain  the  national  aspiration  for 
more  territory  or  even  for  a  new  territory.  A  nation  which 
demands  a  place  in  the  sun  is  evidently  conscious  of  having  a 
soul  too  great  for  its  body;  and  a  nation  which,  like  the  Jewish 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATIONALITY 


385 


nation,  wishes  to  move  into  a  territory  which  it  does  not  now 
occupy,  is  evidently  conscious  of  having  a  soul  without  any 
body  at  all. 

^  3.  NationaUty  and  Institutions.    In  speaking  of  the  rela- 
tion of  nationaUty  to  institutions,  I  shall  use  the  latter  term 
very  broadly  to  mean  any  form  of  social  life  that  is  acquired 
and  that  is  rooted  and  stable  enough  to  exercise  constraint 
on  the  individual.     Of  all  such  institutions  that  are  more 
or  less  intimately  connected  with  nationality  that  which  is 
most  indispensable  is  language.     The  importance  of  this  is 
similar  to  the  importance  of  physical  proximity.     Men  can- 
not become  like-minded  unless  they  can  communicate  with 
one  another.     When  the  Germans  attempt  to  suppress  the 
Polish  language  in  East  Prussia,  or  the  French  language  in 
Alsace-Lorraine,  their  policy  is  quite  sound,  once  you  con- 
cede the  justice  of  nationalizing  a  state    that    has    been 
largely  built  up  by  conquest.     Neither  the  Poles  nor  the 
Alsatians  can  become  good  Germans  so  long  as  their  chief 
instrument  of  self-expression  and  of  human  understanding 
connects  them  with  non-German  groups.     If  we  object  to 
the  forcible  suppression  of  native  languages  then  we  must 
urge  this  as  an  objection  against  the  growth  of  large  nation- 
alities by  conquest  and  assimilation.     For  a  common  lan- 
guage is  essential  to  a  common  nationality.     The  common 
language  is,  furthermore,  in  the  form  of  Hterature  an  object 
of  common  interest,  and  the  major  factor  in  the  common 
tradition. 

A  common  tradition  cannot  be  said  like  language  to  be  a 
necessary  condition  of  nationality,  though  it  may  in  any 
given  case  afford  the  chief  object  of  the  national  sentiment. 
There  is  what  may  be  called  the  retrospective  type  of  na- 
tionalism, which  lives  in  its  own  past,  and  in  the  sense  of 
continuity.  Such,  for  example,  is  the  recent  nationalistic 
cult  in  France  represented  by  such  Catholic  and  Medievalist 
writers  as  Barres  and  Peguy.i  In  any  case  it  is  again  evident 
that  the  important  thing  is  the  present  national  conscious- 
ness.    Every  society  has  a  past;  and  every  society  has  a 

^  Cf.  e.g.,  Barres,  Les  Diracines, 


386 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


tradition  in  the  sense  of  an  inheritance  transmitted  from 
earlier  generations.  But  it  is  possible  to  be  quite  ignorant 
of  one's  past,  or  to  be  quite  unconscious  that  one's  ideas, 
sentiments  or  institutions  are  inherited.  Retrospective 
nationalism  requires  that  a  present  society  shall  know  its 
past,  and  own  it;  valuing  its  present  possessions  because  they 
are  traditional. 

More  important  is  the  question  regarding  the  relation  of 
nationaUty  to  the  state.  The  most  nationalistic  of  all  con- 
temporary thinkers,  the  German  political  philosophers,^  tend 
to  merge  the  two  in  the  name  of  the  ''state-personality.^" 
But  this  view  appears  to  be  as  contrary  to  fact  as  it  is 
dangerous  to  mankind.  The  national  consciousness  un- 
doubtedly finds  one  of  its  most  articulate  forms  of  expression 
in  the  acts  and  policies  of  the  state.  Nationality  inevitably 
aspires  to  political  autonomy,  is  intensified  in  the  struggle 
for  it,  and  is  rendered  more  permanent  and  vigorous  by  the 
achievement  of  it.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  national 
consciousness  acts  as  a  check  upon  the  state,  and  may  even 
lead  to  a  political  revolution  in  which  the  existing  state  is 
disowned  and  overthrown.  Nationality  has  many  other 
forms  of  expression,  such  as  art,  law,  religion,  fashion,  moral 
sentiment  and  philosophy.  Furthermore  if  nationality  and 
the  state  were  one  and  the  same  thing,  then  it  would  mean 
nothing  for  a  nationaUty  to  struggle  for  statehood;  which  is 
perhaps  the  most  potent  form  in  which  nationality  has  mani- 
fested itself  in  modern  history. 

I  shall  say  nothing  of  the  many  other  institutions  in  which 
nationaUty  may  express  itself,  or  through  which  nationaUty 
may  be  confirmed  and  developed.  What  can  be  said  of  one 
of  them  can  be  said  of  aU.  While  some  institutional  unity  is 
necessary,  nationaUty  cannot  be  identified  with  any  single 
institution.  They  are  one  and  aU  conditions  and  evidences 
of  nationaUty,  but  nationaUty  itself  consists  in  a  common 
state  of  mind  shared  by  the  members  of  one  social  group. 
It  is  a  psychological  fact,  and  not  either  a  biological, 
physiographic  or  institutional  fact. 

1  Cf.  above,  pp.  254-261;  and  below,  pp.  421-423. 


THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATIONALITY 


387 


To  put  the  matter  now  in  more  positive  terms  we  may  say 
that  nationality  consists  in  being  of  one  mind,  whatever  the 
causes  which  underUe  it,  and  whatever  the  forms  and  activi- 
ties in  which  it  expresses  itself.     As  a  French  writer  has  re- 
cently expressed  it,  ''a  nation  is  neither  a  territory,  nor  a 
race,  nor  a  language,  nor  a  history;  it  is  a  will,  a  wiU  to  unite 
in  the  present,  and  to  endure  indefinitely  in  the  future."     A 
nation,  in  other  words,  is  animated  by  a  common  purpose  to 
be  something  distinct,  and  to  preserve  its  identity.     Hence 
its  almost  inexhaustible  powers  of  endurance  and  resistance. 
As  this  same  writer  goes  on  to  say:  ^'One  may  formulate  the 
principle  of  nationality  as  follows:  when  one  is  dealing  with 
true  nations,  conquest  is  not  only  a  crime,  it  is  a  mistake."  ^ 

4.   The   ModifiabUity   of   NationaUty.    There  is  a  very 
important  coroUary  of  this  view  of  nationality,  to  which  I 
wish  now  to  turn.     If  nationality  is  essentially  a  present 
state  of  mind,  due  to  the  co-working  of  many  diverse  and 
obscure  causes,  then  it  is  modifiable  by  causes  of  the  same 
type.     A  writer  whom  I  have  already  quoted,  expresses  the 
general  opinion  of  the  ethnologist  when  he  says,  *^In  my 
opinion  the  most  important  of  the  moulding  forces  that  pro- 
duce the  differences  in  nationality  are  epigenetic,  that  is  to 
say,  that  they  are  imposed  on  the  hereditary  material  and 
have  to  be  re-imposed  in  each  generation."  ^    if  national 
traits  were  hereditary,  then  we  should  be  compelled  to  view 
them  as  incurable.     We  should  be  justified  in  saying,  for 
example,   that  every   German  inherits  a  hereditary  taint 
which  he  wiU  transmit  to  his  descendants.     There  would 
then  be  no  way  of  ridding  the  world  of  the  German  idea  save 
to  exterminate  the  tribe,  as  one  might  exterminate  some 
incorrigibly  vicious  pest  or  beast  of  prey.     Or,  on  the  other 
hand,  we  would  be  justified  in  trusting  blindly  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  blood  in  our  veins,  confident  that  a  race  so  favored  by 
nature  could  do  no  wrong.     We  should  abandon  education 
and  propaganda,  and  lapse  into  an  irreconcilable  struggle  of 
racial  types.     That  there  are  racial  diifferences,  notably  such 

*  Goblot:  "Le  Principe  des  Nationalit^s,"  Revue  FhUosophique,  June,  1916. 
^  P.  Chalmers  Mitchell,  op,  cit.,  p.  84. 


388 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


as  distinguish  the  peoples  of  higher  from  those  of  lower  lati- 
tudes, no  one  would  wish  to  deny.  But  it  does  seem  to  be 
clearly  established  that  the  most  important  social  traits, 
those  which  most  vitally  concern  the  safety  and  the  moral 
order  of  mankind,  are  to  be  found  not  in  a  common  heredi- 
tary constitution,  but  in  a  common  social  environment. 
There  is  to-day  in  Germany,  for  example,  a  mode  of  thought, 
feeling  and  conduct  which  is  widely  diffused  and  stable 
enough  to  have  become  typical.  German  babies  are  not 
born  into  the  world  with  bacillae  of  militarism  and  autocracy 
in  their  blood,  but  as  soon  as  they  become  impressionable 
and  suggestible,  it  is  this  type  to  which  they  conform  them- 
selves. Having  been  assimilated  by  it  they  add  to  its  vogue, 
and  so  help  to  perpetuate  it  and  to  impose  it  on  generations 
yet  unborn. 

The  typical  has,  as  appears,  a  powerful  and  almost  irre- 
sistible influence  upon  the  individual.  It  has  a  weight  of 
numbers,  a  prestige  of  position,  a  massiveness  and  inertia 
that  I  would  not  for  a  moment  underestimate.  Springing 
as  it  does  from  so  many  roots,  it  is  not  easily  killed.  Re- 
sulting from  so  many  forces,  it  is  difficult  to  control  it  by  the 
voluntary  manipulation  of  any  one  force.  Nevertheless  it 
is  constantly  changing.  It  is  affected  by  the  invention  and 
independence  of  individuals  in  high  places.  It  is  affected  by 
class  movements,  growing  at  first  out  of  neglected  needs  and 
felt  grievances,  but  finally  acquiring  a  momentum  that  dis- 
turbs the  whole  national  equiUbrium.  It  is  affected  by  ex- 
ternal influences  from  across  the  borders.  Above  all  it  is 
affected  by  great  emotional  crises,  as  a  man's  habits  or 
philosophy  of  Hfe  may  melt  away  in  the  heat  of  religious 
conversion.  Furthermore,  just  as  the  causes  which  produce 
the  national  type  are  largely  out  of  view,  so  the  causes  which 
destroy  it  may  have  brought  it  to  the  verge  of  collapse  with- 
out having  been  observed.  The  French  monarchy  of  1789, 
and  the  Russian  autocracy  of  191 7,  suddenly  collapsed  as 
though  their  foundations  had  long  since  been  undermined 
without  any  visible  effect  upon  the  superstructure.  After 
the  event,  such  upheavals  can  be  explained,  and  there  are 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATIONALITY 


389 


always  some  belated  prophets  who  rise  to  say  that  they  had 
known  it  was  coming.  But  in  point  of  fact  the  greatest 
social  changes  are  the  least  predictable.  In  the  present  era, 
then,  with  all  human  societies  interacting  upon  one  another, 
with  human  passions  at  white  heat,  and  with  many  old 
barriers  and  landmarks  already  swept  away,  it  is  impossible 
to  speak  of  any  nationality  as  though  its  peculiar  traits  were 
a  finality,  inaccessible  to  change.  In  discussing  national 
characteristics  I  shall  therefore  always  think  of  them  as 
modifiable  for  better  or  worse.  I  shall  regard  German 
characteristics  as  a  curable  disease,  or  American  charac- 
teristics as  precariously  sound;  both  needing  the  light  of 
wisdom,  and  both  in  the  long  run  amenable  to  it. 

II.    ABUSES   OF   NATIONALISM 

While  we  are  discussing  the  principle  of  nationality  I  wish 
to  call  attention  to  certain  tendencies  both  to  abuse  and  to 
self-correction  which  it  contains  within  itself. 

I.  Confusion  of  Standards.  In  the  first  place  there  is  a 
sense  in  which  one  may  be  too  national  in  one's  judgments, 
just  as  one  may  be  too  personal.  Scientists  are  accustomed 
to  subordinate  personalities  to  method,  evidence  and  truth. 
A  scientific  truth  gets  no  enhancement  of  value  from  the 
person  of  its  discoverer,  and  once  discovered  it  is  no  person's 
private  possession.  In  the  same  way  science  protests,  or 
should  protest,  against  a  nationalizing  of  science.  There  is, 
strictly  speaking,  no  German  physics,  or  any  French  mathe- 
matics; there  are  just  physics  and  mathematics,  objective  and 
universal  systems  of  truth,  unaffected  by  their  social  en- 
vironment, and  in  so  far  as  known  the  common  property  of 
all  who  are  capable  of  understanding  and  using  them.  This 
scientific  prejudice  against  nationalizing  science  has  a  sound 
basis.  In  so  far  as  national  claims  and  credits  are  allowed 
to  affect  science  they  can  only  result  in  diverting  it  from  its 
purely  disinterested  effort  to  understand  and  control  nature. 
And  what  holds  of  science  holds  of  many  other  forms  of 
human  attainment.  The  great  standards  of  attainment  are 
universal  standards,  such  as  truth,  beauty  and  goodness; 


j 


390 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


and  the  excessive  admiration  of  a  person  or  of  a  nation  tends 
to  compromise  these  standards.  I  have  known  this  sort  of 
thing  to  happen  as  a  result  of  loyalty  to  an  educational  in- 
stitution. The  love  of  it  for  its  own  sake,  the  habit  of 
enthusiastic  self-admiration,  has  obscured  the  ideals  of  edu- 
cation and  scholarship  by  which  its  success  in  the  long  run  is 
measured.  The  same  thing  commonly  results  from  national 
loyalty  or  patriotism.  Professor  Dewey  has  remarked  that 
''while  most  nations  are  proud  of  their  great  men,  Germany 
is  proud  of  itself  rather  for  producing  Luther."  ^  From  this 
it  is  a  short  step  to  being  proud  of  Luther  because  Germany 
produced  him;  and  in  this  last  attitude  the  distinctive  merits 
of  Luther  himself  are  lost  sight  of.  In  other  words,  the  cult 
of  nationaUty  tends  to  conflict  with  the  cult  of  quality.  It 
tends  to  complacency,  vanity  or  self-assertion,  without  criti- 
cal judgment  or  the  aspiration  to  be  better  than  oneself. 
It  tends  to  create  an  object  of  undiscriminating  worship. 
Thus  nationality,  according  to  Santayana,  is  to-day  ''the 
one  eloquent,  public,  intrepid  illusion." 

"Illusion,  I  mean,  when  it  is  taken  for  an  intimate  good  or  a 
mystical  essence,  for  of  course  nationality  is  a  fact.  People  speak 
some  particular  language  and  are  very  uncomfortable  where 
another  is  spoken  or  where  their  own  is  spoken  differently.  They 
have  habits,  judgments,  assumptions  to  which  they  are  wedded, 
and  a  society  where  all  this  is  unheard  of  shocks  them  and  puts 
them  at  a  galling  disadvantage.  ...  It  is  natural  for  a  man  to  like 
to  live  at  home,  and  to  Kve  long  elsewhere  without  a  sense  of  exile 
is  not  good  for  his  moral  integrity.  It  is  right  to  feel  a  greater 
kinship  and  affection  for  what  lies  nearest  to  oneself.  But  this 
necessary  fact  and  even  duty  of  nationality  is  accidental  ...  it 
can  be  made  the  basis  of  specific  and  comely  virtues;  but  it  is  not 
an  end  to  pursue  or  a  flag  to  flaunt  or  a  privilege  not  balanced  by 
a  thousand  incapacities.  Yet  of  this  distinction  our  contemporaries 
tend  to  make  an  idol,  perhaps  because  it  is  the  only  distinction  they 
feel  they  have  left."  ^ 

2.  Fanaticism.  A  more  dangerous,  if  not  fatal  abuse 
of  nationality,  is  to  allow  the  zeal  which  it  begets  to  blind 

^  German  Philosophy  and  Politics,  p.  17. 
2  Winds  of  Doctrine,  pp.  6-7. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATIONALITY 


391 


one  to  other  and  different  causes.  It  tends  to  become 
an  absorbing  and  bUnding  passion,  and  so  to  impel  men  to 
intolerance  and  aggression.  Even  a  retrospective  nation- 
alism has  this  element  of  fanaticism  in  it.  A  people  that 
exaggerates  its  identity  with  the  past  will  brood  over  old 
wrongs  and  revive  old  issues  that  have  no  proper  place  in  the 
life  of  the  present  world.  Nations  project  themselves  into  a 
past  in  which  they  were  not  as  nations  really  concerned  and 
try  to  write  history  over  again  in  a  manner  satisfactory  to 
their  new  conception  of  the  national  identity  and  the  national 
role.  This  is  one  of  the  motives  which  threatens  hopelessly 
to  complicate  the  dispute  over  Alsace-Lorraine,  which  should 
be  decided  upon  the  basis  exclusively  of  the  interests  and 
preferences  of  living  men. 

The  greatest  instance  which  history  affords  of  national 
fanaticism  is  the  present  German  worship  of  Kultur.  By 
Kultur  is  meant  the  particular  system  of  life,  scale  of  values 
and  set  of  ideas  that  happen  to  be  characteristic  of  modern 
Germany.  The  German  not  unnaturally  admires  them. 
But  it  is  possible  to  admire  one's  own  style  of  life  with  a 
saving  sense  of  humor.  One  may  be  thoroughly  loyal  and 
devoted,  and  yet  admit  into  a  back  corner  of  one's  mind  the 
idea  that  there  are  also  other  styles  of  life,  equally  well 
thought  of  by  those  who  practice  them,  and  perhaps,  for  all 
one  knows,  as  good  in  their  way  as  one's  own.  This  idea 
may  never  find  articulate  expression;  but  its  being  there 
makes  an  enormous  difference  to  one's  manner  and  morals. 
It  restrains  one  from  excessive  self-laudation,  for  fear  of 
appearing  absurd.  It  leaves  one,  in  some  small  degree  at 
least,  open  to  conviction  and  to  correction.  It  makes  it 
possible  for  one  to  enter  into  courteous  and  temperate  dis- 
cussion with  self-respecting  persons  of  an  opposite  persuasion. 
And  in  so  far  as  it  informs  one  that  behind  the  alien  modes  of 
life  there  is  the  same  loyalty  and  devotion  that  one  feels  for 
one's  own,  one  is  deterred  from  outrage  and  insult.  In  other 
words,  one  recognizes  a  pluraUty  of  moral  forces,  and  con- 
ducts oneself  among  the  nations  as  in  a  society  of  equals. 
Without   this   saving   sense   of   fallibility,    nationality   de- 


392 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


generates  into  a  sectarian  bigotry,  into  that  Vaterldnderie, 
which  even  Nietzsche  so  much  despised,  that  '*  national 
heart-itch  and  blood-poisoning,  on  account  of  which  the 
nations  of  Europe  are  at  present  bounded  off  and  secluded 
from  one  another  as  if  by  quarantines."  ^ 

3.   Nationalism  and  Humanity.     But  if  intense  nationality 
tends  to  blindness  and  fanaticism,  there  is  also  a  more  hope- 
ful side  of  the  matter.    The  same  causes  which  tend  to  pro- 
duce nationalities  tend  to  reach  further  and  produce  broader 
and  more  inclusive  unities  of  life.     If  it  is  possible  for  men 
of  different  racial  extraction  to  acquire  a  national  conscious- 
ness, then  racial  heterogeneity  need  not  stand  in  the  way  of 
the  development  of  an  international  consciousness.     If  it  is 
possible  for  a  society  which  lacks  political  autonomy  to  be 
united  by  the  aspiration  for  such  autonomy,  then  there  is  no 
reason  why  mankind  at  large,  despite  the  absence  of  any 
common  political  authority  or  system  of  law,  should  not  be 
united  by  the  will  to  achieve  such  international  institutions. 
All  that  is  necessary  is  that  the  forces  which  beget  such  a 
sense  of  solidarity  within  narrower  limits  should  operate  over 
a  wider  area.    And  this  is  in  fact  precisely  what  has  begun 
to  happen.     There  are,  for  example,  no  longer  any  natural 
frontiers.     The  new  facilities  for  communication  and  trans- 
portation, which  have  tunnelled  mountains,  and  which  have 
linked  the  most  distant  continents  both  by  sea  and  by  air, 
are  rapidly  developing  a  sense  that  there  is  but  one  country 
inhabited  by  one  people.     The  citizens  of  the  British  Empire 
and  the  fellow-soldiers  of  the  Allies  are  at  this  moment  being 
so  firmly  cemented  by  the  common  cause  which  they  are 
serving  on  the  soil  of  France,  that  half  the  circumference  of 
the  earth  can  in  the  future  no  longer  divide  them.     The  war 
has  furthermore  brought  men  to  feel  as  never  before  that  the 
natural  resources  of  the  earth  are  a  common  possession  on 
which  they  all  depend,  and  which  must  be  exchanged  and 
distributed  as  human  needs  require.     Nothing  could  be  more 
significant  than  the  present  discussion  of  the  world's  food 

*  The  Joyful  Wisdom,  V,  §§  347,  377. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATIONALITY 


393 


supply.     It  means  a  wholly  new  recognition  of  the  common 
human  problem  of  conservation. 

Most  important  of  all  is  the  growing  sense  of  the  moral 
solidarity  of  mankind.     Men  now  live  in  one  neighborhood, 
and  find  themselves  compelled  to  work  out  their  safety  and 
well-being  together.     The  basal  moral  problem  of  the  con- 
flict of  interests  is  now  quite  Hterally  a  world-problem.     No 
man  is  now  so  far  removed  from  any  other  man  that  he  can 
afford  to  be  indifferent  to  what  that  other  man  does.     Before 
he  can  go  about  his  own  business  with  any  sense  of  security, 
he  must  know  how  other  men  across  the  seas  are  going  to 
conduct  their  affairs.     It  is  imperative  that  there  should  be 
some  general  system  of  law,  supported  by  collective  human 
opinion,  and  enforced  by  collective  human  might,  which  will 
guarantee  his  rights  and  his  sphere  of  action  in  the  world  at 
large.     Because  there  is  as  yet  no  such  guarantee  it  is  neces- 
sary to  resort  to  the  crude  and  violent  measure  of  war.     It 
will  undoubtedly  cost  mankind  a  long  struggle  and  perhaps 
many  wars  to  achieve  such  guarantees.     But  the  important 
thing  is  that  the  need  should  be  so  keenly  and  so  widely  felt. 
The  sense  of  a  common  problem  is  the  beginning  of  a  common 
purpose  to  solve  it,  and  of  a  common  will  to  enforce  and 
maintain  the  new  system  of  life  once  it  is  inaugurated. 

I  need  scarcely  add  that  the  common  culture  of  civilized 
mankind,  —  the  common  science,  the  common  heritage  of 
antiquity,  the  common  religion  of  Europe  and  America,  the 
common  cult  of  art,  the  common  usage  of  fashion  and  cus- 
tom, and  the  common  moral  traditions,  —  all  provide  a  fund 
of  ideas  and  sentiments  by  which  mankind  of  the  modern 
time  have  come  more  and  more  to  be  of  one  mind. 

Nor  is  it  in  the  least  necessary  that  human  life  should 
therefore  be  reduced  to  one  uniform  and  monotonous  type. 
There  will  still  be  a  plentiful  opportunity  for  individual  and 
local  variations;  and  these  variations  will  continue  to  be 
more  interesting  and  in  a  sense  more  important  than  that 
which  all  mankind  have  in  common.  It  has  never  been  felt 
that  human  diversity  is  prevented  by  the  fact  that  almost 
all  men  have  two  legs.    We  find  a  sufficient  interest  in  noting 


I 


i 


! 


394 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


how  many  different  ways  there  are  of  being  a  biped.  An 
outsider  might  conceivably  object  to  the  monotonous  recur- 
rence of  the  human  features.  Almost  every  human  being  has 
two  ears,  two  eyes,  one  nose  and  one  mouth.  But  we  who 
know  the  human  physiognomy  intimately  see  the  little  differ- 
ences that  escape  the  outsider.  An  American  may  feel  that 
Eskimos  are  monotonously  alike,  but  it  is  not  reported  that 
the  Eskimo  lover  has  any  difficulty  in  identifying  his  sweet- 
heart. There  are  still  enough  differences  even  within  the 
racial  type  to  provide  for  as  many  distinguishable  individuals 
as  there  is  room  for  on  this  already  crowded  earth.  And 
similarly  if  all  men  should  learn  to  conform  to  one  moral  and 
legal  system,  there  is  no  reason  to  fear  that  there  would  no 
longer  be  enough  ways  in  which  men  might  differ  from  one 
another  in  temperament,  opinion  and  feeling. 

The  fact  is  that  it  is  not  bare  difference  that  interests  us, 
but  difference  within  narrow  limits,  or  sHght  variations  of  a 
common  type.  The  marvel  of  physiognomy  is  that  there 
should  be  so  many  differences  of  pattern,  emphasis  and  ex- 
pression with  so  large  a  degree  of  sameness.  If  Polyphemus 
should  reappear  on  earth  with  his  one  eye,  we  would  not  re- 
gard him  as  an  interesting  addition  to  the  rich  variety  of 
human  faces;  we  would  hide  him  away  as  a  monstrosity.  We 
already  have  the  same  feeUng  regarding  certain  forms  of 
private  iniquity.  And  I  see  no  reason  why  we  should  not 
in  time  to  come  regard  the  international  law-breaker,  the 
traitor  to  mankind,  simply  as  a  monstrosity  like  the  wife- 
beater  or  the  parricide.  We  shall  then  be  interested  in  the 
marvelous  fact  that  there  are  so  many  different  ways  of  being 
internationally  minded,  just  as  there  are  now  so  many  ways 
of  being  decent  to  one's  near  of  kin.  The  differences  be- 
tween man  and  man  may  in  future  become  finer  and  more 
subtle  differences.  But  within  the  narrower  limits,  differ- 
ences will  increase  rather  than  decrease,  as  they  always  have 
in  times  of  peace  and  security.  And  the  fact  that  the  differ- 
ences are  finer  and  more  subtle  will  not  make  them  any  less 
interesting,  for  we  shall  at  the  same  time  have  sharpened 
our  discrimination. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATIONALITY 


395 


There  is  no  reason  why  national  differences  should  not 
remain  within  a  united  mankind,  as  local  differences  remain 
within  the  nation,  and  individual  differences  within  the 
locality.  But  just  as  an  excessive  and  fanatical  individual- 
ism or  localism  is  inconsistent  with  an  orderly  and  co-opera- 
tive national  life,  so  a  fanatical  nationalism  is  inconsistent 
with  an  orderly  and  co-operative  fife  of  mankind.  All  that 
any  nation  need  sacrifice  is  its  right  to  disregard  and  despise 
every  other  nation.  But  this  sacrifice  will  cost  it  nothing 
of  value.  On  the  contrary  it  will  provide  a  guarantee  of 
security  that  will  permit  it  to  live  its  own  best  life  with  the 
friendly  consent  or  help  of  tolerant  neighbors. 


III.     LIMITS    OF    THE   PRESENT   STUDY 

I  have  spoken  above  of  the  modifiability  of  national  traits. 
Nationality  is  not  an  ultimate  or  irretrievable  fatality.  And 
I  am  equally  disposed  to  agree  that  nationality  is  never  per- 
fectly distinct  and  separable.  If  one  were  representing  it 
chromatically  one  would  use  tints  and  shades  which  blended 
at  the  borders,  rather  than  solid  colors  or  black  and  white. 
It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  it  would  be  possible  to  find  many 
Frenchmen  and  Germans  that  resemble  one  another  more 
closely  than  they  resemble  their  fellow-countrymen.  Our 
chromatic  scheme  would  then  represent  only  the  relative 
distribution  of  certain  types.  It  would  mean  that  a  certain 
way  of  thinking  or  feeling  or  acting  is  more  common  within 
the  boundaries  of  France,  for  example,  than  anywhere  else. 
It  is  not  confined  to  France,  but  is  sufficiently  concentrated 
there  to  give  a  certain  characteristic  coloring  to  the  whole 
when  surveyed  from  a  distance  and  compared  with  other 
localities. 

Unless  one  has  an  exaggerated  idea  of  what  is  intended,  I 
do  not  see  how  one  can  deny  that  there  are  national  physiog- 
nomies, or  national  ^'reputations  "  that  are  more  or  less  justi- 
fied. Take,  for  example,  the  following  statement  of  what 
will  be  recognized  as  the  commonplaces  of  national  char- 
acterization, in  Peer  Gynt's  acknowledgments  of  his  in- 
debtedness: 


396  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

"  For  fortune  such  as  I've  enjoyed 
I  have  to  thank  America. 
My  amply-furnished  library 
I  owe  to  Germany's  later  school. 
From  France,  again,  I  get  my  waistcoats, 
My  manners,  and  my  spice  of  wit,  — 
From  England  an  industrious  hand. 
And  keen  sense  for  my  own  advantage. 
The  Jew  has  taught  me  how  to  wait. 
Some  taste  for  dolce  far  niente 
I  have  received  from  Italy,  — 
And  one  time,  in  a  perilous  pass, 
To  eke  the  measure  of  my  days, 
I  had  recourse  to  Swedish  steel."  ^ 

It  would,  I  think,  be  blind  to  deny  that,  relatively  and 
broadly  speaking,  America  is  the  home  of  luck,  France  of 
fashion,  Germany  of  learning,  and  England  of  industry  and 
utility.  Such  characterizations  must  not  be  pressed  too 
far,  but  that  is  no  reason  for  rejecting  their  obvious  truth. 
It  should  rather  invite  us  to  search  further  for  more  funda- 
mental and  significant  characteristics. 

In  the  chapters  that  follow  I  shall  not  attempt  to  deal  with 
Russia  and  Italy,  important  as  it  is  that  we  should  just  now 
come  to  a  better  understanding  of  these  nations.  The  igno- 
rance which  is  the  real  cause  of  the  omission,  is  perhaps  in 
some  degree  palliated  by  the  fact  that  in  these  cases  nation- 
ality is  newer  and  less  well-marked  than  in  the  cases  of 
Germany,  France  and  England.  Even  America,  perhaps 
from  its  youth,  or  perhaps  from  my  own  lack  of  sufficient 
detachment,  appears  to  me  to  possess  a  much  more  ambigu- 
ous nationality  than  that  of  its  major  enemy  or  of  its  major 
allies.  But  in  this  case  I  feel  entitled  as  an  American  to  give 
expression  to  certain  ideas  and  sentiments  that  I  hope  will 
some  day  be  nationally  American,  if  they  are  not  so  to-day. 
^  In  keeping  with  the  general  plan  of  the  book  I  shall  empha- 
size the  fundamental  thought  of  these  four  nations.     The 

»  Act  IV,  Scene  I. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATIONALIT\ 


397 


philosophy  of  a  country,  and  especially  its  moral,  political 
and  religious  philosophy,  is  perhaps  the  most  articulate  and 
self-conscious  expression  of  its  characteristic  spirit.  And  it 
has  the  further  importance  of  containing  those  ideals,  stand- 
ards and  policies  by  which  we  may  best  judge  of  it3  future. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 
GERMAN   NATIONAL   TRAITS 

It  may,  I  think,  now  be  set  down  as  an  established  fact 
that  the  German  people  as  a  whole,  or  those  of  them  that  are 
out  of  jail,  are  at  this  moment  no  better  and  no  worse  than 
their  government.     It  is   characteristic   of   Germany   that 
what  those  in  authority  think,   those  in  a  more  humble 
station  should  accept  and  believe.     It  may  truthfully  be 
said  that  we  are  warring  primarily  against  German  leaders 
and  institutions,  but  this  is  because  the  masses  of  the  people 
have  for  the  moment  whole-heartedly  adopted  what  their 
leaders  and  institutions  have   authoritatively  proclaimed. 
If  it  were  not  for  this  solidarity  of  conviction,  sentiment  and 
action  Germany  would  not  be  that  formidable  menace  against 
which  the  non-German  world  has  found  itself  compelled  to 
take  up  arms. 

In  attempting  to  set  forth  that  German  idea  of  life  which 
now  threatens  the  world,  I  shall  first  describe  certain  more 
fundamental  national  traits  which  underly  the  external  forces 
and  the  articulate  reasonings  that  are  a  part  of  the  record  of 
history.  In  examining  these  national  traits  I  shall  make  no 
attempt  to  distinguish  between  that  which  is  racial  and  that 
which  is  due  to  the  influence  of  tradition,  education  and 
cultural  environment.  I  shall  assume,  in  keeping  with  the 
general  idea  of  nationahty  which  I  have  set  forth  in  the  last 
chapter,  that  national  traits  are  in  the  main  acquired  traits, 
and  capable,  therefore,  of  being  altered  by  the  same  complex 
and  obscure  agencies  that  have  generated  them. 

I.    PROFUNDITY, 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  German  to  do  what  he  does  for 
the  deepest  of  reasons.  It  is  a  common  mistake  to  regard 
the  Germans  as  simple-minded  barbarians.     It  is  true  that 

398 


GERMAN  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


399 


their  deeds  are  often  strikingly  similar  to  the  deeds  of  bar- 
barians; but  the  inner  consciousness  which  accompanies 
them  is  strangely  different.  The  barbarian  is  governed  by 
primitive  instincts  and  appetites.  But  while  the  German 
has  strong  instincts  and  appetites,  and  while  these  un- 
doubtedly supply  much  of  his  impelling  force,  that  which  is 
pecuHarly  German  is  the  profound  reason  by  which  they  are 
justified,  and  by  which  the  counter-impulses  of  pity  and 
humanity  are  repressed.  In  so  far  as  it  is  barbarism  at  all, 
it  is  what  M.  Cambon  has  called  ''pedantic  barbarism''  {la 
harharie  pedante).  When  the  German  strangles  his  enemies 
with  chlorine  gas,  he  doesn't  do  it  for  fun  or  for  pure  deviltry 
or  savage  cruelty;  he  does  it  from  a  sense  of  duty,  in  order  to 
carry  out  thoroughly  and  systematically  what  follows  logi- 
cally from  his  first  premises.  , 

For  these  first  premises  he  goes  back  even  to  metaphysics. 
No  ruler  but  a  German  emperor  would  have  proclaimed  in  a 
state  document  his  nation's  indebtedness  to  Immanuel  Kant. 
In  the  case  of  no  other  nation  is  it  so  easy  to  express  the 
national  purpose  in  philosophical  terms;  for  no  other  nation 
is  so  philosophically  conscious.  It  is  not  as  though  the 
philosophers  themselves  had  been  men  of  affairs,  or  had  been 
pecuHarly  interested  in  social  and  poUtical  problems.  Quite 
the  contrary.  It  is  the  boast  of  German  philosophy  to  be 
peculiarly  metaphysical,  technical  and  erudite;  and  in  its 
murky  depth  to  surpass  both  the  shallowness  of  the  English 
and  the  clearness  of  the  French.  Nowhere  else  has  philos- 
ophy been  so  professional  and  so  speculative.  The  first 
premises  to  which  the  German  appeals  must  be  absolute  and 
ultimate  premises. 

''Our  sense  of  order,"  says  Professor  Troeltsch,  ''is  not  founded 
on  its  usefulness  for  material  and  social  ends,  but  emanates,  to- 
gether with  the  sense  of  duty,  from  an  ideal  conception  of  the  spirit 
which  is  the  rule  and  law  of  human  life  and  of  the  universe.  .  .  . 
The  German  is  by  nature  a  metaphysician  who  ponders  and 
strives,  from  the  spiritual  inwardness  of  the  universe,  to  grasp  the 
inner  meaning  of  the  world  and  of  things,  of  man  and  destiny.  It 
will  always  be  idle  to  explain  the  origin  and  development  of  this 


400 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


predominant,  though  by  no  means  universal,  characteristic.    It 
remains  the  final  German  life  secret."  ^ 

This  Grilndlichkeit  of  the  German,  his  love  of  thoroughness 
and  purposiveness,  makes  him  grimly  insensible  to  minor 
incongruities  that  provoke  laughter  or  offend  taste  among 
less  soberly  earnest  people.  The  immortal  Kant  himself  is 
the  supreme  embodiment  of  humorless  pedantry.  In  his 
lectures  on  education  he  gives  his  students  instructions  on 
the  suckling,  swathing,  cradling  and  weaning  of  infants,  be- 
cause they  may  some  day  become  tutors  in  private  families, 
and  because,  as  he  goes  on  to  explain,  *'it  happens  at  times 
that  further  children  are  born  in  the  house,  and  that  a  tactful 
tutor  can  aspire  to  be  the  confidant  of  the  parents  and  to  be 
consulted  by  them  also  with  respect  to  the  physical  education 
(of  such  children),  and  this  also  because  one  is,  often,  the 
only  Gelehrte  in  the  house."  ^  Such  ''preparedness"  as  this 
must  be  the  despair  of  less  learned  nations!  Many  will 
recognize  a  like  thoroughness  and  foresight  in  less  humorous 
applications  such  as  the  spy-system  or  the  manufacture  of 
munitions  of  war. 

This  same  trait  is  partly  responsible  for  the  readiness  with 
which  the  Germans  associate  God  with  their  enterprises. 
Boutroux  tells  us  that  at  Heidelberg  in  1869,  Professor  Zeller 
opened  the  lecture  with  the  words,  "To-day  we  will  construct 
God."  It  might  be  said  that  God  is  not  without  honor  save 
in  his  own  home,  which  is  metaphysics.  Familiarity  has 
much  the  same  effect  here  as  elsewhere.  Other  peoples  hope 
for  the  favor  of  God,  but  usually  feel  some  doubt  about  it. 
Having  no  prior  understanding  with  God  they  can  never  be 
perfectly  sure  of  the  alliance.  But  when  the  Emperor  tele- 
graphs, as  he  did  to  Prince  Leopold  on  the  occasion  of  the 
capture  of  Riga,  ''Onward  with  God,"  he  feels  perfectly  sure 
of  the  direction  in  which  God  is  going  to  move.  Indeed  the 
more  one  reflects  upon  this  favorite  phrase,  the  more  one  gets 

1  E.  Troeltsch:  "The  Spirit  of  German  Kultur,"  in  Modern  Germany  in  Re- 
lation to  the  Great  War,  by  various  German  writers. 

'^  Quoted  by  von  Hugel,  in  The  German  Soul,  from  Kant's  Sdmrntliche 
Werke,  Hartenstein,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  472, 


GERMAN  NATIONAL   TRAITS 


401 


the  feeling  that  God  is  only  a  passenger.  And  why,  indeed, 
if  it  suits  their  purpose,  should  not  the  metaphysicians  who 
constructed  God  take  him  with  them? 

Other  people  have  been  unpleasantly  affected  by  this 
proprietary  theology.  They  are  accustomed  to  associate 
God  only  with  their  best  moments,  and  to  approach  him  with 
bowed  head  and  troubled  conscience.  Paul  Sabatier  tells 
us  that  before  1870  the  French  had  much  respect  for  the 
great  German-Protestant  virtues,  sobriety,  prudence,  thrift 
and  honesty,  and  acknowledged  their  deserved  success. 

^''The  war  of  1870  broke  out,  and  brought  in  a  few  weeks  a  vast 
disillusionment.  No  one,  indeed,  dreamed  of  reproaching  Ger- 
many  for  her  victories;  but  when  people  saw  the  horrors  of  war 
and  the  conqueror  intermingling  the  roar  of  the  cannon  with 
mystical  effusions;  when  they  learnt  that  he  regarded  himself  as 
God's  fellow-worker,  and  when  Protestant  voices  were  naive 
enough  to  exclaim  that  every  Prussian  soldier  carried  a  Bible  in 
his  knapsack,  and  to  add  that  if  we  had  had  a  Luther  we  should 
have  had  no  Sedan,  the  hearts  of  the  conquered  were  wounded,  and 
their  conscience  shocked.  .  .  .  Many  experienced  a  supreme  re- 
vulsion from  religious  sentiment,  a  sort  of  aversion  for  it."  1 

But  there  is  another  aspect  of  this  German  profundity  that 
is  more  terrifying,  if  not  more  offensive.     I  refer  to  the  in- 
exorable consistency  with  which  the  German  will  carry  out 
his  first  principles  once  he  has  adopted  them.     His  is  the  a 
priori  type  of  mind  which,  convinced  by  its  own  inner  reasons 
becomes  thereafter  indifferent  to  what  experience  brings 
forth.     Being  convinced,  for  example,  that  the  state  has  a 
divine  mission  and  is  entitled  to  a  dominion  proportional  to 
its  power,  the  German  is  not  deterred  by  the  protests  of  those 
who  stand  in  the  way.     Or  having  once  adopted  a  certain 
theory  of  warfare,  and  reconciled  it  with  this  higher  law  of 
the  state,  the  German  is  not  rendered  in  the  least  irresolute 
by  the  incidental  sufferings  which  he  inflicts. 

In  carrying  out  his  preconceived  ideas,  the  German  is  also 
pecuharly  able  to  harden  himself  against  moral  tradition  and 
the  opinion  of  mankind.     There  is  an  interesting  passage  in 

*  Sabatier,  France  To-day,  pp.  50-51. 


402 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Nietzsche  in  which  this  author  attacks  the  English  tendency 
to  fall  back  upon  the  moral  tradition,  as  illustrated  by  the 
case  of  George  Eliot. 

''They  have  got  rid  of  the  Christian  God,  and  now  think  them- 
selves obliged  to  cling  firmer  than  ever  to  Christian  morality,  that 
is  English  consistency;  we  shall  not  lay  the  blame  of  it  on  ethical 
girls  a  la  Eliot.  In  England  for  every  little  emancipation  from 
divinity,  people  have  to  reacquire  respectability  by  becoming  moral 
fanatics  in  an  awe-inspiring  manner.  That  is  the  penalty  they 
have  to  pay  there.  With  us  it  is  different.  When  we  give  up 
religious  behef ,  we  thereby  deprive  ourselves  of  the  right  to  main- 
tain a  stand  on  Christian  morality.  This  is  not  at  all  obvious  of 
itself,  we  have  again  and  again  to  make  this  point  clear,  in  defiance 
of  English  shallow-pates.  Christianity  is  a  system,  a  view  of 
things,  consistently  thought  out  and  complete.  If  we  break  out 
of  it  a  fundamental  idea,  the  beUef  in  God,  we  thereby  break  the 
whole  to  pieces."  ^ 

With  the  majority  of  the  Germans  of  to-day  the  reason  for 
rejecting  moral  conventions  is  not  as  with  Nietzsche  the 
abandonment  of  the  premises  of  Christianity.  It  is  rather 
the  acceptance  of  a  certain  theory  of  the  state  according  to 
which  the  conduct  of  the  state  lies  upon  a  wholly  different 
plane  from  that  of  the  individual  While  the  Allies  are  so 
dominated  by  moral  conventions  that  they  cannot  meet  the 
exigencies^of  war  or  state-policy  with  resolution  and  a  whole 
heart,  but  must  introduce  considerations  of  pity,  charity, 
gentleness  or  moral  rights  where  in  principle  they  do  not 
belong,  the  German  prides  himself  on  understanding  the 
matter  better.  Thus  Professor  Troeltsch  says  that  while 
there  is  in  all  countries  a  conflict  between  the  code  of  the 
individual  and  that  of  the  state,  in  Germany  alone  do  they 
honestly  accept  the  distinction. 

"On  either  side  of  this  world-war,  there  is  an  inner  conflict 
between  different  modes  of  ethical  valuation,  between  Peace  ethics 
and  War  ethics;  Humanitarianism  and  National  Egoism;  Chris- 
tian Love  and  the  Fight  for  Existence;  Democratic  Equity  and  the 
Aristocratic  aim  at  the  Highest;  an  ethics  of  self-limitation  and  an 

^  Twilight  of  the  Idols,  167. 


GERMAN  NATIONAL  TRAITS  403 

ethics  of  unbounded  will  and  exaltation  of  the  self.  .  .  Among  the 
Allies  this  mode  of  valuation  (the  second  in  the  above  a2st 
IS  confined  to  some  leading  pubKcists  and  influential  groups  wSe 
opinions  are  dehberately  kept  in  the  background;  for  the  masses 
he  Humamtarian-Democratic-Civilization  Gospel  is  nut  Tnthl 
forefront,  whilst  the  Germans  are  denounced  as  stLSnVexdu 
sively  for  National  Esoism  t.,  n^  sianoing  exciu- 

honesf  pnH   L  ■  ■•■  .      Germany  people  are  more 

nonest,  .      .  and,  agam,  a  certam  bent  to  doctrinarianism  in  the 
German  character  leads  them  to  think  out  and  to  emphSze  con 
tradictory  theories  even  in  the  hour  of  greatest  peril?f      ' 

In  other  words,  Troeltsch  finds  the  dualism  to  be  past 
reconahng;  and  regards  the  profession  of  the  Allies  only  as  a 
sort  of  shallowness,  or  as  a  deceit  used  deliberately  for  politi- 
ca  purposes  He  does  not  see  the  real  point,  which  ifthat 
the  Alhes  wil  not  accept  the  dualism  as  final,  but  strugrfe 

niorality.     They  are  not  as  yet  successful  in  doing  it ;  but  the 
effort  represents  an  honest  aspiration,  even  if  it  is  a  pious  one. 
lo  the  German  mmd  which,  having  once  accepted  the  dif- 
ference of  pnnciple,  can  thenceforth  ignore  ordinary  moral 
considerations  m  matters  of  state,  the  Englishman  appears 
faint-hearted  or  hypocritical.    To  the  Englishman,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  German  seems  incredibly  hard.     Even  the 
Enghshman  of  the  imperiaUstic  type,  like  Lord  Cromer,  says 
of  von  Bulow  s  Imperial  Germany,  that  no  one  but  a  North 
German  could  have  written  it,  because  it  is  so  free  even  from 
the  professton  of  regard  for  humanity.     Germany  will  not 
take  the   east  trouble  to  secure  the  amity  of  other  races- 
whereas  the  British  colonial  official  requires  the  satisfaction 
of  at  least  beltemng  that  the  native  population  is  better  for 
nis  being  there.^ 

In  short,  on  the  one  hand  we  have  a  people  who  are  ac- 
customed to  compromise,  anchored  to  the  general  moral 
tradition  ofChristendom,  accustomed  to  decide  each  question 
on  its  ments  and  m  the  light  of  experience,  sensitive  to 

T.,'  "^^'^"^l  Morality  and  State  Morality,"  Neue  Rundschau,  Feb    1016  d 
147-    Quoted  by  von  Hugel,  op.  cil.,  p.  88.  ^    '  '^' 

'  a.  Lord  Cromer's  Politicd  and  Literary  Essays,  II,  19x4,  pp.  149-151. 


404 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


criticism  or  protest;  on  the  other  we  have  a  people  who  are 
accustomed  to  ask  nothing  more  than  the  sanction  of  their 
own  reasons,  and  who  are  ready,  once  this  is  obtained,  to 
revolutionize  morality  and  to  defy  the  opinion  of  mankind. 
Nietzsche  has  referred  to  Germany  as  ^^the  European  nation 
which  exhibits  at  this  very  day  the  maximum  of  reliability, 
seriousness,  bad  taste  and  positiveness,  which  has  on  the 
strength  of  these  qualities  a  right  to  train  every  kind  of 
European  mandarin."  ^  Another  writer  of  German  extrac- 
tion. Baron  Friedrich  von  Hiigel,  whose  little  book  on  The 
German  Soul  is  a  marvel  of  candor  and  sympathy,  has  said  of 
this  national  aptitude  for  deducing  action  from  first  prin- 
ciples, *'It  is  this  innate  need  of  system  that  renders  him 
steady,  but  also  obstinate;  virile  and  brutal;  profound  and 
pedantic;  comprehensive  and  rich  in  outlook,  and  rationalist 
and  doctrinaire."  ^ 

II.    EGOISM 

It  is  a  commonplace  that  the  German  has  a  highly  de- 
veloped self.  Mr.  Santayana  has  found  "egotism"  to  be 
the  central  motive  in  German  philosophy,  and  "national 
egoism"  is  as  we  have  seen  the  political  fault  of  which  Ger- 
many is  most  commonly  accused.  But  to  state  the  matter 
fairly  requires  some  nicety  of  analysis.  Curiously  enough 
the  German  finds  the  Englishman  and  even  the  American 
to  be  unpleasantly  self-conscious,  in  a  sense  in  which  he  is 
himself  quite  guiltless.  When  we  come  to  inquire  into  this 
paradox  we  discover  that  "self -consciousness,"  as  we  are 
accustomed  to  use  the  term,  means  almost  the  precise  oppo- 
site of  being  self -confident  or  self-satisfied.  That  self-con- 
sciousness of  which  we  must  candidly  admit  Anglo-Saxons 
to  be  characteristically  guilty  is  an  exaggerated  regard  for 
what  other  people  think  of  us.  It  is  an  attempt  to  see  our- 
selves in  the  mirror  of  society;  or  to  get  out  of  ourselves  so 
that  we  can  see  what  sort  of  an  appearance  we  are  making. 
The  poseur  looks  at  himself  from  the  outside.     That  awk- 

*  The  Genealogy  of  Morals^  II,  §  3. 

*  Op,  cU,y  p,  128, 


GERMAN  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


405 


wardness  or  embarrassment  which  such  "self-consciousness" 
begets  is  due  to  the  difficulty  of  being  in  two  places  at  the 
same  time;  the  difficulty  of  acting  and  at  the  same  seeing 
how  it  looks,  or  of  talking  and  at  the  same  time  hearing  how 
it  sounds.     For  this  mode  of  conduct  the  German,  we  are 
told,  hasn't  even  any  word.     When  he  speaks  of  "Selbst- 
hewussf'  he  means  something  very  different.     He  means 
being  "well  aware  of  his  own  merits  or  importance."  ^    But 
the  man  who  is  thus  confident  of  himself  isn't  troubled  by 
the  appearance  he  presents  to  others.     Quite  the  contrary. 
Just  as  the  Anglo-Saxon  variety  of  self-consciousness  implies 
an  excessive  awareness  of  the  watchful  eye  of  others,  this 
German  Selhsthewusstsein  implies  the  disregard  of  others. 

In  characterizing  the  German,  then,  as  egoistic,  I  do  not  in 
the  least  mean  that  he  has  any  desire  to  please,  or  even  any 
desire  to  offend;  but  an  honest  indifference  to  both  sorts  of 
reaction.  He  is  self -preoccupied.  He  acts  upon  his  inner 
conviction,  and  finds  here  a  quite  sufficient  sanction.  It  is 
this  quality  that  accounts  for  the  unrestrained  heartiness  of 
the  German's  manners.'  RoUand  tells  us  that "  the  pleasure 
of  singing  so  potent  in  Germany  was  in  some  sort  a  pleasure 
of  vocal  gymnastics.  It  was  just  a  matter  of  being  inflated 
with  air  and  then  letting  it  go  vigorously,  powerfully,  for  a 
long  time  together  and  rhythmically."  2  In  other  words,  the 
German  is  not  troubled  by  the  fear  that  some  one  will  hear 
him.  If  he  crowds  his  neighbor,  this  is  not  from  any  par- 
ticular interest  in  his  neighbor,  but  from  an  inner  impulse 
to  move  his  elbows. 

It  is  to  this  quality  that  Germany  owes  the  reputation  of 
being  less  highly  socialized  than  her  western  neighbors,  and 
in  particular  France.  And  it  is  this  quality  which  threatens 
to  prevent  Germany  from  learning  anything.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  note  that  the  term  "character"  as  used  outside  of 
Germany  has  a  social  implication.  It  is,  in  part  at  least, 
made  of  reputation  or  the  opinion  of  the  world.  But  Fichte 
having  explained  that  the  original  German  language  con- 

^  Von  Hiigel,  op.  cit.,  p.  149. 
2  Jean-Chris  top  he,  p.  419. 


4o6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


tained  no  equivalent  of  the  neo-Latin  words  "humanity/' 
''popularity''  and  ''liberality/'  "because  Germans  are  too 
original  and  sincere  for  such  clap-trap/'  went  on  to  say  that 
"character  has  no  particular  German  name,  precisely  be- 
cause, without  any  knowledge  or  reflection  of  our  own,  char- 
acter is  expected  to  proceed  from  our  very  being"  —  ''to 
possess  character  and  to  be  German,  are  without  doubt 
synonymous."  ^  Again  we  find  here  this  same  confidence, 
which  is  both  sublime  and  naive,  that  all  the  German  has  to 
do  is  to  be  himself.  Needless  to  say  this  attitude  is  not  con- 
.  ducive  to  learning  better,  least  of  all  from  the  judgment  or 
example  of  others. 

A  contemporary  writer  tells  us  that  it  is  not  the  mission  of 
Germany  to  learn  from  the  world  but  to  be  the  teacher  of  the 
world  {Welter zieher) .  And  this  writer  is  not  in  the  least  dis- 
mayed by  the  unwillingness  of  the  world  to  be  taught. 
There  is  something  almost  pathetic  in  his  eager  insistence 
that  the  world  and  not  Germany  must  be  to  blame.  "The 
world-war  has  shown,"  he  says,  "how  few  friends  we  have  in 
the  world.  .  .  .  But  the  more  enemies  the  more  honor! 
(Those  of  them  who  have  lived  among  us)  have  been  aware 
that  they  have  never  compassed  the  depth  and  greatness  of 
the  German  spirit.  We  have  known  them  only  too  well. 
But  they  have  never  understood  us,  their  soul  tells  them 
that."  2 

This  self-sufficiency  inevitably  assumes  exaggerated  and 
aggressive  forms,  and  is  the  chief  distinction  of  the  heroes 
whom  modern  Germany  most  admires.  Professor  Kuno 
Francke,  who  will  scarcely  be  suspected  of  overstating  the 
matter,  speaks  of  Richard  Wagner,  Friedrich  Nietzsche  and 
William  II  as  "perhaps  the  three  men  whose  influence  has 
shaped  the  feelings  and  the  ideals  of  the  present  generation 
of  Germans  most  conspicuously."  They  represent  "a  highly 
sensitive,  strained,  feverishly  active  state  of  mind." 

"Richard  Wagner's  world  is  a  world  of  reckless  self-assertion, 
boundless  appetite,  mystic  longing,  incessant  willing  and  striving! 

»  Fichte:  Werke,  VIII,  pp.  321,  446      Quoted  by  von  Hugel,  op.  cit.,  p.  177. 
"  J.  A.  Lux:  Deutschland  als  Welterzieher,  p.  4. 


GERMAN  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


407 


His  heroes  storm  through  life  regardless  of  good  and  evil,  impelled 
by  the  one  desire  of  living  themselves  out  to  the  full  and  of  bringing 
out  what  is  in  them." 

Nietzsche's  philosophy  is  "an  ecstatic  appeal  to  the  selfish 
instinct" ;  while  WilHam  II  is  "the  most  intense  and  the  most 
ardent  champion  of  personal  rule  that  has  arisen  since 
Napoleon." 

"These  three  men  are  a  new  illustration  of  the  old  truth  that  in 
order  to  possess  greatness  you  must  be  possessed  by  it;  that  there 
is  no  genius  without  a  certain  megalomania;  and  that  the  true 
genius  makes  this  very  self-overestimation  an  incentive  for  cease- 
less self-discipline  and  self-denying  devotion  to  work,  and  thereby 
rises  to  his  own  true  self."  ^ 

It  is  evident  that  German  egoism  very  naturally  associates 
itself  with  that  profundity  and  inner  conviction  of  which  I 
have  spoken  above.  Baron  von  Hugel  has  described  their 
united  effect  so  vividly  that  I  can  do  no  better  than  to  quote 
him  at  length: 

"The  first  stage  of  this  study  attempted  to  describe  the  funda- 
mental peculiarities  of  the  German  soul:  an  imperious  need  ...  of 
theory,  system,  completeness,  at  every  turn  and  in  every  subject- 
matter;  an  immense  capacity  for  auto-suggestion  and  monoide- 
ism;  and  an  ever  proximate  danger,  as  well  as  power,  of  becoming 
so  dominated  by  such  vivid  projections  of  the  racial  imaginings 
and  ideals,  as  to  lose  all  compelling  sense  of  the  limits  between  such 
dreams  and  reality,  and  especially  all  awareness,  or  at  least  alert- 
ness, as  to  the  competing  rights  and  differing  gifts,  indeed  as  to  the 
very  existence,  of  other  souls  and  other  races,  with  their  intrinsi- 
cally different  civilizations,  rights  and  ideals.  .  .  .  Thus  this  soul 
easily  loses  such  initial  sense  as  it  may  possess  of  its  own  abiding 
need  of  other  races,  other  civilizations,  not  to  conquer  or  to  absorb, 
but  to  love  and  to  learn  from.  .  .  . 

"We  thus  find  a  soul  startlingly  imlike,  not  the  Scotch,  but  the 
English.  The  English  faults  are,  upon  the  whole.  Defects;  the 
Germans'  faults  are,  mostly.  Excesses.  The  English  are  too 
loosely-knit,  ^go-as-you-please,'  fragmentary,  inarticulate;  a  con- 
tinuous compromise  and  individual  self-consciousness.    The  Ger- 

1  A  German- Americanos  Confession  of  Faith,  pp.  21-22,  25. 


4o8 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


mans  are  too  tightly  buckled-up,  too  much  planned  and  prepared, 
too  deliberately  ambitious  and  insatiable,  too  readily  oblivious  of 
others  —  especially  of  their  own  need  of  others,  of  esteeming  others 
and  being  esteemed  by  them.''  ^ 

III.    APTITUDE   FOR   ORGANIZATION 

It  is  often  said  that  the  German  is  peculiarly  submissive 
and  docile.  Even  the  most  German  of  thinkers,  such  men  as 
Bismark  and  von  Bulow  have  asserted  that  the  Germans 
have  no  native  capacity  for  self-government.  But  it  is  very 
doubtful  if  native  capacity  has  anything  to  do  with  it.  The 
German  Empire  is  the  result  of  the  militarization  of  Prussia, 
and  the  Prussianization  of  Germany.  It  owes  its  being  to  a 
centralized  and  paternalistic  system.  In  1848  when  politi- 
cal liberalism  swept  over  Europe  it  was  met  and  overwhelmed 
in  Germany  by  the  rising  movement  for  national  unity,  and 
this  counter-movement  was,  owing  to  historical  exigencies 
and  accidents,  dominated  by  dynastic  and  military  institu- 
tions. The  result  has  been  that  Germans  identify  their 
nationality  with  discipline  and  obedience.  That  which 
stands  in  the  way  of  liberty  and  political  individualism  is  not, 
I  think,  any  racial  incapacity,  but  rather  the  strength  and 
prestige  of  a  brilliantly  successful,  and  in  the  minds  of  most 
Germans,  indispensably  necessary  system. 

Indeed  to  characterize  the  German  as  naturally  submissive 
would  be  to  contradict  that  self-sufficiency  with  which  he 
appears  so  unmistakably  to  be  endowed.  The  fact  of  the 
matter  seems  to  be  as  follows.  Being  at  least  as  fond  of  his 
own  way  as  the  rest  of  humanity,  and  finding  himself  com- 
pelled for  what  he  deems  imperative  reasons  of  self-preserva- 
tion to  submit  to  discipline,  he  looks  for  compensations.  And 
these  he  finds  in  emphasizing  his  personal  superiority  to 
others  within  the  system;  and  in  participating  in  a  collective 
superiority  over  other  nations.  He  can  always  say  "I  am 
superior,''  to  somebody;  and  if  not,  he  can  still  say  ''we  are 
superior,"  to  everybody. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  recognition  of  superior 

*  Op,  cU.y  pp.  154-155- 


GERMAN  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


409 


rank  is  an  attitude  of  humility.  For  there  are  evidently  two 
sides  to  it.  He  to  whom  you  look  up  may  on  the  same  prin- 
ciple look  down  upon  you;  and  you  may  in  turn  be  just  as 
arrogant  as  you  please  toward  those  who  are  still  further 
down  in  the  scale.  And  the  more  harshly  you  are  subordi- 
nated to  your  superiors  the  more  likely  you  are  to  restore 
your  self-respect  at  the  expense  of  your  inferiors;  just  as  in 
the  old  days  of  college  hazing  in  America,  those  who  suffered 
most  as  Freshmen  assumed  the  most  lordly  airs  when  they 
became  Sophomores,  or  just  as  the  sergeant  who  has  to  put 
up  with  the  tyranny  of  a  Prussian  officer  is  all  the  more  likely 
on  that  account  to  make  the  most  of  his  authority  over  the 
poor  private. 

Never  in  human  history  has  the  principle  of  gradation  been 
carried  out  so  elaborately  as  in  modern  Germany.  In  no 
other  nation  is  there  so  nice  a  regard  for  distinction  of  rank. 
And  no  other  feature  of  German  Hfe  strikes  the  average 
American  as  so  alien  and  ridiculous.  In  his  recent  book,  our 
former  Ambassador  to  Germany,  Mr.  James  W.  Gerard,  has 
given  a  description  of  some  of  the  progressively  ordered 
titles  to  which  the  German  citizen  may  aspire. 

''One  of  the  most  successful  ways  of  disciplining  the  people  is 
by  the  Rat  system.  Rat  means  councillor,  and  is  a  title  of  honor 
given  to  anyone  who  has  attained  a  certain  measure  of  success  or 
standing  in  his  chosen  business  or  profession.  For  instance,  a 
business  man  is  made  a  commerce  Rat;  a  lawyer,  a  justice  Rat;  a 
doctor,  a  sanitary  Rat;  an  architect  or  builder,  a  building  Rat; 
a  keeper  of  the  archives,  an  archive  Rat;  and  so  on.  They  are 
created  in  this  way:  first,  a  man  becomes  a  plain  Rat,  then,  later 
on,  he  becomes  a  secret  Rat  or  privy  councillor;  still  later,  a  court 
secret  Rat,  and  later  still,  a  wirklicher,  or  really  and  truly  secret 
court  Rat  to  which  may  be  added  the  title  of  Excellency,  which 
puts  the  man  who  has  attained  this  absolutely  at  the  head  of  the 
Rat  ladder."  1 

In  addition  to  the  Rat  system  there  is  the  system  of  orders 
and  decorations,  such  as  the  Order  of  the  Black  Eagle,  the 
Order  of  the  Red  Eagle,  the  Prussian  Order  of  the  Crown, 

*  My  Four  Years  in  Germany,  pp.  114-115,  and  fif. 


410 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  Order  of  the  House  of  HohenzoUern,  with  special  orders 
for  each  of  the  twenty-five  German  States.     These  orders  in 
turn  are  subdivided  into  classes,  and  even  embellished  by  a 
laurel  crown  or  a  sword  with  stars.     Once  a  year  there  is 
held  in  BerHn  a  great  Ordensfest,  or  great  banquet  at  which 
all  who  have  received  such  distinction  can  meet  together  and 
become  more  vividly  and  more  collectively  aware  of  it.     The 
system  ramifies  into  every  corner  of  society.     There  is  a 
place  in  it  for  domestic  servants  and  postmen  as  well  as  for 
those  of  great  wealth  or  exalted  birth.     It  is  a  system  of 
merit,  paternally  administered  from  above;  rewarding  those 
who  in  the  judgment  of  the  state  have  been  faithful  and  well- 
behaved,  like  good  boys  in  a  boarding-school.     Wives  share 
the  dignity  of  their  husbands.     As  Mr.  Gerard  says,  "The 
wife  of  a  successful  builder  is  known  as  Mrs.  Really  Truly 
Secret  Court  Building  Rat,  and  her  social  precedence  over 
the  other  women  depends  entirely  upon  her  husband's  posi- 
tion in  the  Rat  class."     Appealing  as  it  does  to  so  many 
human  motives,  to  vanity  and  jealousy  as  well  as  to  am- 
bition and  emulation,  it  places  enormous  power  in  the  hands 
of  those  who  administer  it,  and  ''tends  to  induce  the  plain 
people  to  be  satisfied  with  a  piece  of  ribbon"  instead  of  the 
more  substantial  benefits  of  political  power  or  economic 
advancement. 

It  is  this  habit  of  taking  one's  place  in  the  system,  of  sub- 
mitting willingly  to  what  the  system  as  a  whole  requires  and 
to  what  the  superior  authorities  of  the  system  command, 
that  makes  Germany  so  formidable  in  this  modern  warfare 
of  nations.     No  American  can  help  believing  that  such  an 
orderly  equilibrium  is  premature.     Sooner  or  later'^the  masses 
of  mankind  are  going  in  Germany  as  they  have  elsewhere  to 
insist  upon  the  substance  of  power,  and  to  resent  arrogance 
from  any  quarter.     Then  Germany  will  for  the  first  time 
face  the  real  political  problem,  which  is  to  reconcile  order  and 
discipline  with  a  healthy  and  resentful  sense  of  equality. 
But  meanwhile  the  more  primitive  paternalism  of  Germany 
gives  her  an  enormous  advantage  over  her  enemies.     War 
finds  her  already  on  a  war-footing;  with  every  man  in  his 


GERMAN  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


411 


place  and  ready  to  go  forward  at  the  word  of  command.  He 
asks  only  that  the  machine  shall  run  smoothly  and  accom- 
plish its  purpose.  In  a  letter  pubHshed  in  an  American 
newspaper  in  December,  1914,  Professor  Paul  Natorp  of  the 
University  of  Marburg  describes  a  butcher's  boy  who  had 
expressed  regret  at  being  too  young  to  go  to  the  front,  be- 
cause ''whether  one  lives  a  few  years  more  or  less  makes  no 
difference.  One  would  like  really  to  have  done  something." 
That,  Professor  Natorp  went  on  to  explain, 

"that  is  the  secret  of  the  German:  He  wants  to  have  done 
something;  everything  else  is  secondary.  Truly,  it  is  not  simply 
that  we  must  protect  our  skins;  that  was  the  first  call;  now  we 
have  a  mission  in  the  world  to  fulfil,  which  we  have  no  right  to  go 
back  on.  And  what  is  this  mission?  It  is  nothing  secret,  it  is  of 
the  simplest  sort;  to  do  thorough  work  of  whatever  sort  it  may  be, 
in  science,  in  technical  work,  in  industry  —  and  so  in  war,  if  war 
must  be.  And  for  the  sake  of  the  common  goal,  each  standing 
faithfully  at  his  post,  each  willing  to  submit  himself  to  iron  disci- 
pline, though  in  no  sense  in  a  servile  way."  ^ 

The  spirit  of  this  reminds  one  of  the  so-called  "Dutch 
first  sergeant"  who  used  to  be  proverbial  in  the  American 
army  for  his  steadiness  and  fidehty;  and  for  the  fact  that  he 
found  his  military  duties  quite  satisfying  and  spent  his  leisure 
hours  sitting  in  barracks  smoking  his  pipe  instead  of  seeking 
adventures  in  the  adjoining  city.  It  is  in  perfect  keeping 
with  the  great  German  ethical  symbol,  the  "categorical  im- 
perative" of  Kant.  This  ethics  is  essentially  an  ethics  of 
disciplined  submission,  which  teaches  the  individual  to  obey 
without  expectation  of  reward  and  without  discussion.  The 
categorical  imperative,  like  the  superior  miHtary  or  political 
authority,  gives  commands  without  offering  inducements. 

Nothing  could  afford  a  more  striking  proof  of  the  German's 
aptitude  for  organization  than  his  introduction  of  this  idea 
into  the  field  of  culture,  where  it  is  commonly  supposed  that 
things  can  safely  and  best  be  left  to  the  vagaries  of  individual 
genius.  Kultur  means  both  the  cult  of  organization  and  the 
organization  of  culture.     It  is  this  stress  on  organization 

*  Springfield  Republican,  December  6,  1914,  p.  6. 


412 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


that  creates  the  impression  that,  since  the  Empire,  German 
culture  has  not  grown  but  has  been  made.     It  has  been  well- 
made,  no  doubt,  as  are  all  things  made  in  Germany;  but  it 
strongly  suggests  the  chemical  compositions  which  Germany 
is  now  so  ingeniously  substituting  for  the  products  of  nature. 
German  men  of  culture,  theologians,  painters,  philosophers, 
historians,  mathematicians,  poets  and  all  the  rest  cannot  be 
weaned  from  the  system,  even  as  it  appears,  by  the  call  of 
truth.     Nothing  has  given  greater  offense,  and  in  many 
cases  occasioned  a  more  genuine  grief  to  those  who  were  once 
their  friends,  than  the  promptness  with  which  German  schol- 
ars left  their  studies  and  class-rooms  at  the  sound  of  their 
master's  voice,  and  recited  in  chorus  the  Httle  chant  of 
national  self-laudation  which  was  expected  of  them.     I  have 
only  recently  read  a  volume  of  essays  entitled  Modern  Ger- 
many in  Relation  to  the  Great  War,  written  by  a  dozen  learned 
German  professors,  and  have  again  been  astonished  at  its 
inhuman  unanimity.     There  is  never  the  least  confession  of 
a  national  fault  or  weakness.     Bernhardi  has,  we  are  told, 
his  own  peculiar  opinions  on  war,  but  they  '^need  not  be 
taken  amiss  from  a  frank  and  straightforward  soldier.'*     *'It 
is  mere  pharisaism"  to  reproach  Germany  for  marching  into 
Belgium,  since  anyone  would  have  done  the  same  ''in  our 
place,"  realizing  ''what  adversaries  were  about  to  attack  us." 
But  nothing,  I  think,  testifies  more  eloquently  to  the  splendid 
discipline  of  these  professors  than  Professor  Meinecke's  refer- 
ence to  the  superior  "earnestness  and  devotion"  with  which 
Germans  "study  the  beauty  of  Greek  and  Florentine  art," 
until  their  "reverential  silence"  is  disturbed  by  "herds  of 
English  tourists."  ^    The  imagination  which  it  requires  to 
picture  a  band  of  German  students  sitting  in  an  Italian  gal- 
lery in  reverential  silence  surpasses  any  feat  of  professional 
apologetics  with  which  I  am  acquainted. 

The  Germans,  then,  are  the  best  disciplined  people  in  the 
world.  They  have  therefore  a  great  power  to  do  that  which 
those  in  authority  will  that  they  shall  do.  They  have  a  cor- 
respondingly small  aptitude  for  doing  that  which  as  in- 

>  Op.  cU„  pp.  564,  565,  577. 


GERMAN  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


413 


dividuals  they  might  prefer  to  do;  that  which  universal 
standards  of  truth  or  beauty  might  dictate;  or  that  which  is 
required  by  the  happiness  and  well-being  of  mankind.  Dis- 
cipline in  itself  means  nothing  less  and  nothing  more  than 
power.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  ends  to  which  such 
power  shall  be  impUed.  On  the  contrary  it  tends  to  the 
suppression  of  the  discussion  and  sensibiHty  from  which 
humane  and  sound  policy  are  most  likely  to  spring. 

IV.    EMOTIONALITY 

It  is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  Germans  are 
characteristically  phlegmatic  or  unemotional.  They  are 
perhaps  the  most  high-pitched  and  irascible  people  on  earth. 
Baron  von  Hiigel  suggests  that  this  accounts  for  their  im- 
pulse to  become  absorbed  in  something.  "The  German," 
he  says,  "is  indeed  considerably  more  nervous,  sensitive, 
offendible,  vindictive  than  is  the  Englishman;  but  this  leads 
him  to  get  away  from  this  readily  painful  self  into  ideas  and 
theory  and  into  himself,  as  it  is  there  projected  and  en- 
larged." ^ 

There  is  evidently  a  difficulty  in  reconciling  this  emotion- 
ality, and  in  particular  the  unparalleled  development  in  Ger- 
many of  musical  creation  and  appreciation,  with  the  extraor- 
dinary realism  and  hardness  of  German  public  policy.  To 
the  Frenchman  the  German  seems  to  have  eliminated  feeling 
altogether,  and  to  have  reduced  human  nature  to  intellect 
and  will.  This,  for  example,  is  the  central  thesis  which  so 
astute  an  observer  as  Professor  Boutroux  has  maintained  in 
his  book  on  Philosophy  and  the  War.  But  on  the  other  hand 
Germany  is  the  home  not  only  of  music,  but  of  Schwdrmereiy 
lyric  tenderness  and  the  sentimental  enjoyment  of  nature. 
He  who  can  get  to  the  bottom  of  this  paradox  will  have  gone 
far  toward  understanding  the  German  soul.  I  cannot  pre- 
tend to  see  my  way  clear;  but  I  think  I  see  some  gleams  of 
light. 

That  which  the  Frenchman  like  Boutroux  discovers  in  the 
German  is  really  not  the  absence  of  feeling,  but  rather  the 

*  Op.  cit.j  p.  148. 


414 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


distrust  of  feeling.     The   Frenchman,   hke   Rousseau   and 
Comte,  for  example,  is  accustomed  in  moral  matters   to 
appeal  to  the  social  feelings,  to  sympathy  and  humanity. 
He  regards  these  as  authoritative,  as  the  Englishman  tends 
to  regard  happiness  or  utility.     The  German,  on  the  other 
hand,  turns  moral  matters  over  altogether  to  reason,  will, 
or  authority.     He  does  not  deny  feeling;  but  he  disquahfies 
It  from  the  direction  of  his  affairs,  perhaps  because  he  is  only 
too  well  acquainted  with  it.     Feehng  thus  driven  from  the 
field  of  action  has  to  create  a  world  for  itself,  where  it  may 
secure  expression  without  intruding  where  it  does  not  belong. 
Some  music,  such  as  martial  or  drinking  songs,  shouted  in 
exultant  unison,  or  such  as  the  self-enhancing  and  hero- 
praising  romanticism  of  Wagner,  will  reinforce  the  national 
will.^   Music,   furthermore,  from  its  very  inarticulateness, 
readily  associates  itself  with  the   German's  metaphysical 
sense  of  being  inwardly  in  touch  with  ultimate  reahty;  as  is 
not  the  case  with  ''  the  artistic  conception  of  the  Latin  races, 
with  their  sense  of  clearness,  form,  grace  and  transparency,' 
which  is  inherited  from  the  Renaissance,"  and  which  finds 
a  more  natural  expression  in  the  plastic  arts.^     Music  is  also 
the  most  primitive  of  the  arts.     As  Brunetiere  has  pointed 
out,  ''it  is  of  all  the  arts,  the  only  one  to  which  even  animals 
are  manifestly  sensible.'' 2    It  might,  therefore,  be  thought 
to  be  pecuHarly  consistent  with  the  elemental  racial  vigor  of 
the   Germans.     But  these  explanations  are  evidently  in- 
sufficient.    We   have   to   suppose,   I   think,    that   German 
emotionality,  naturally  abundant  and  aggressive,  and  sup- 
pressed by  duty  or  poHcy,  elaborates  a  rich  but  isolated  life 
of  its  own.     Music  would  lend  itself  to  this  most  readily  be- 
cause of  all  the  arts  it  is  the  most  subjective  and  the  most 
irrelevant  to  practice.     This  is  Mr.  Santayana's  view  of  the 
matter: 

''The  real  strength  of  the  Germans,"  he  says,  "lies  not  in  those 
external  achievements  of  which  at  this  moment  they  make  so 
much  ...  it  lies  rather  in  what  they  have  always  prized,  their 

*  Cf.  E.  Troeltsch,  op.  cit.,  p.  79. 

*  La  Renaissance  de  Vldedisme,  p.  40. 


GERMAN  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


415 


GemiUh  and  their  music.  Perhaps  these  two  things  have  a  common 
root.  Emotion  is  inarticulate,  yet  there  is  a  mighty  movement  in 
it,  and  a  great  complexity  of  transitions  and  shades.  This  intrinsic 
movement  of  the  feelings  is  ordinarily  little  noticed  because  people 
are  too  wide  awake,  or  too  imaginative.  .  .  .  They  roundly  call 
things  beautiful,  painful,  holy  or  ridiculous;  but  they  do  not  speak 
of  their  Gemiith.  .  .  .  But  when  the  occasions  of  our  emotions,  the 
objects  that  call  them  forth,  are  not  so  instantly  focussed,  when  we 
know  better  what  we  feel  than  why  we  feel  it,  then  we  seem  to  have 
a  richer  and  more  massive  sensibility.  Our  feelings  absorb  our 
attention  because  they  remain  a  thing  apart:  they  seem  to  us 
wonderfully  deep  because  we  do  not  ground  them  in  things  external. 
Now  music  is  a  means  of  giving  form  to  our  inner  feelings  without 
attaching  them  to  events  or  objects  in  the  world."  ^ , 

It  is  this  isolation  of  the  emotional  life  from  the  world  of 
affairs  which  has  impressed  some  critics  as  insincerity. 
Romain  Rolland,  for  example,  says  that  German  art  is  false, 
not  in  the  sense  of  failing  truly  to  represent  feehng,  but  in 
the  sense  that  the  feeling  itself  is  false. 

"Music,"  he  says,  "is  an  implacable  mirror  of  the  soul.  The 
more  a  German  musician  is  naive  and  in  good  faith,  the  more  he 
displays  the  weaknesses  of  the  German  soul,  its  uncertain  depths, 
its  soft  tenderness,  its  want  of  frankness,  its  rather  sly  idealism,  its 
incapacity  for  seeing  itself,  for  daring  to  come  face  to  face  with 
itself.    That  false  idealism  is  the  secret  sore  even  of  the  greatest."  ^ 

Whatever  justice  there  is  in  this  charge,  and  I  do  not  pre- 
tend to  say  how  much  there  is,  is  due,  I  think,  to  the  fact 
that  the  emotions  which  the  German  feels  most  strongly  in 
his  moments  of  aesthetic  exaltation  are  not  those  which  govern 
his  actions.  They  are  emotions  without  being  motives; 
which  is  perhaps  what  we  mean  by  sentimentality. 


The  four  traits  which  I  have  marked  in  the  German  char- 
acter can  now  be  fitted  together  to  make  a  picture.  The 
German  is  fond  of  having  profound  reasons  for  what  he  does; 
is  given  to   aggressive  and   somewhat  inconsiderate  self- 

*  Egotism  in  German  Philosophy ^  pp.  1 60-161. 
2  Jean-Christophe,  p.  373. 


4i6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


expression;  is  wilHng  to  take  his  place  in  a  system  for  the 
sake  of  the  relative  advantage  and  the  collective  strength  it 
affords;  and  develops  his  emotional  Hfe  in  a  realm  of  its  own 
where  it  cannot  interfere  with  his  profound  reasons,  his  inner 
will  or  with  the  smooth-working  of  his  system. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 
THE  GERMAN  PROFESSION  OF  FAITH 

Despite  the  very  general  agreement  that  Germany  is  suffer- 
ing from  some  grave  moral  disorder,  the  doctors  do  not  agree 
in  their  diagnosis.  Some  think  that  Germany  is  suffering 
from  too  much  philosophy  of  the  type  produced  by  Kant, 
Fichte  and  Hegel ;  others  think  that  she  is  suffering  from  too 
little  of  it,  or  from  the  perversion  of  it,  or  from  too  much  of 
the  contrary  materialistic  sort.  Still  others  think  that  the 
fault  lies  in  her  commercialism,  or  in  her  poKtical  system,  or 
in  a  primitive  greed  for  power.  There  is,  I  think,  some  ele- 
ment of  truth  in  all  of  these  explanations.  I  propose  that 
we  examine  them  in  the  following  order:  first,  idealistic  in- 
fluences; second,  anti-idealistic  influences;  third,  the  recon- 
cihation  of  the  two,  or  the  way  in  which  the  idealistic  philos- 
ophy has  been  used  to  afford  a  justification  of  anti-idealistic 
motives. 

I.    IDEALISTIC   INFLUENCES 

We  have  observed  that  it  is  characteristic  of  Germans  to 
provide  a  philosophical  justification  for  what  they  do.  The 
philosophy  to  which  they  commonly  appeal  for  this  purpose 
is  that  philosophy  which  we  have  already  examined  under 
the  head  of  **  Absolute  IdeaHsm."  English,  French  and 
American  adherents  of  this  philosophy  now  find  themselves 
in  a  somewhat  awkward  predicament.  The  doctrines  which 
they  have  for  a  generation  proved  and  proclaimed  are  now 
used  as  the  premises  for  policies  which  their  moral  enlighten- 
ment and  national  loyalty  compels  them  to  denounce.  It  is 
natural  under  such  circumstances  that  some  among  them 
should  have  sought  to  show  that  the  bad  Germany  of  to-day 
is  violating  rather  than  fulfilling  the  precepts  of  the  masters.^ 

*  Cf.  e.g.,  G.  Dawes  Hicks,  "German  Philosophy  and  the  Present  Crisis," 
Hibhert  Journal,  October,  1914. 

417 


f 


4i8 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


GERMAN  PROFESSION  OF  FAITH 


419 


The  Germans  themselves,  however,  think  otherwise.  Not 
only  does  the  Kaiser  quote  Kant,  but  the  Gelehrte,  the  learned 
men  themselves,  insist  upon  Unking  present  German  policy 
with  the  teachings  of  their  most  exalted  thinkers.  They 
resent  the  idea  that  Germany  should  be  thought  to  be  acting 
on  no  higher  principles  than  those  of  Bismark,  Nietzsche, 
Treitschke  or  Bernhardi.  Not  that  they  repudiate  these 
principles.  So  far  as  I  know  they  never  repudiate  anything 
that  a  good  German  has  said.  But  they  insist  that  these 
principles  can  all  be  traced  back  to  more  august  authorities, 
such  as  Luther,  Kant,  Fichte  or  Ranke.  Thus  Professor 
Friedrich  Meinecke,  speaking  of  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  tells 
us  that  *' precisely  those  Prussian  statesmen  who  were  most 
deeply  imbued  with  the  thoughts  of  Fichte  and  Kant  de- 
manded most  vigorously  at  this  period  the  annexation  of 
Saxony  by  Prussia,  and  Fichte  himself,  in  1813,  wished  the 
King  of  Prussia  would  become  the  enforcer  of  German 
nationalism."  ^ 

I  do  not,  of  course,  say  that  it  is  possible  to  deduce  the 
annexation  of  Saxony  from  Kant's  Transcendal  Ego  of  Ap- 
perception, but  it  is  clear  that  Professor  Meinecke,  at  any 
rate,  refuses  to  admit  any  inconsistency  of  spirit  or  principle 
between  the  Kantian  idealism  and  the  aggressively  nation- 
alistic policy  of  Prussia. 

In  the  same  apologetic  handbook  from  which  I  have  cited 
the  above  passage.  Professor  Troeltsch,  who  is  himself  a  phil- 
osopher of  religion,  refers  to  German  idealism  as  that  **  which 
once  more  to-day,  after  many  fluctuations,  dominates  Ger- 
man philosophy  and  has  done  more  inwardly  to  form  and 
strengthen  the  youth  of  Germany  than  anything  else  within 
the  last  twenty  years."     He  goes  on  to  say  that, 

^'  "German  idealism  up  to  the  present  may  be  said  to  have  set 
itself  the  task  of  combining  with  the  mechanical  concept  of  nature, 
the  full  appreciation  of  the  moral,  religious  and  artistic  spirit,  and 
the  assertion  of  freedom  with  the  mechanical  principle.  ...  It  is 
chiefly  the  spirit  of  Kant  and  Fichte  which  has  inspired  these 
investigations  up  to  the  present  day.    Their  spirit,  only  calmer, 

1  "Kultur  Policy  of  Power  and  Militarism/'  in  Modern  Germany,  p.  569. 


more  realistic  and  cosmopolitan,  permeates  the  national  uprising 
of  1914,  as  it  permeated  that  of  1813."  ^ 

Both  writers,  in  other  words,  refer  to  idealism  as  not  only 
the  great  quickening  force  in  the  best  German  thought  of 
to-day,  but  as  the  philosophy  by  which  the  life  of  the  spirit  has 
been  reconciled  with  public  policy  and  the  new  interest  in  me- 
chanical science. 

In  recapitulating  the  teachings  of  absolute  idealism  for 
our  immediate  purposes  I  shall  confine  myself  to  those  two 
ideas  which  have  the  most  evident  and  direct  bearing  on 
questions  of  policy. 

I.  The  Ethics  of  Self -Realization,  The  ethical  teachings 
of  Kant  and  his  successors  may  be  summed  up  in  the  prin- 
ciple of  self-realization.  That  which  all  German  idealists 
unite  in  condemning  is  utilitarianism.  The  distinguishing 
feature  of  utilitarianism  is  its  judgment  of  conduct  by  its 
consequences  for  the  happiness  of  mankind.  The  German 
idealist,  condemning  such  standards  as  sordid  and  ignoble, 
insists  that  conduct  shall  be  judged  by  some  inner  principle 
expressing  itself  in  the  consciousness  of  the  agent  himself. 
This  teaching  first  appears  in  Luther^s  emphasis  on  the 
priority  of  the  individual  conscience  over  ecclesiastical 
authority.  Second  it  appears  in  Kant's  teaching  that  duty 
shall  take  precedence  of  inclination.  But  the  Kantian  prin- 
ciple was,  as  we  have  seen,  too  abstract  and  formal  either  to 
satisfy  the  metaphysical  craving  for  contact  with  ultimate  re- 
aHty,  or  to  afford  a  guide  for  action.  The  metaphysical  de- 
mand is  satisfied  by  the  Fichtean  idea  that  duty  is  the  voice  of 
the  absolute;  and  thej)ractical  demand  is  met  by  the  Hegelian 
subordination  of  the  individual  to  the  State.  The  moral 
agent  is  now  invested  with  a  new  dignity  and  authority  as 
being  the  incarnation  of  the  ultimate  reality;  and  the  mean- 
ing of  duty  is  now  more  plainly  interpreted  as  obedience  to 
the  imperative  requirements  of  national  policy.  The  essen- 
tial principle  of  self-realization  remains.  Action  is  not  to  be 
judged  by  its  consequences,  but  by  its  conformity  with  an 

*  Op,  cU,,  p.  81. 


420 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


authority  acknowledged  in  conscience.  Having  become 
state-conscious,  one  does  what  that  state-consciousness 
prompts  one  to  do,  on  the  ground  that  in  so  doing  one  is  en- 
acting in  one's  own  person  the  very  will  of  God.  Fortified 
by  this  sense  of  inward  authorization  and  infallibility,  one 
may  ignore  with  proud  disdain  the  effects  which  one's  action 
happens  to  have  on  mere  feelings,  whether  one's  own  or  those 
of  one's  fellow-creatures. 

Professor  Troeltsch  gives  us  an  interesting  comparison  of 
French,  English  and  German  ideas  of  freedom.  The  French 
idea,  he  says  rests  upon  the  conception  of  equality;  the 
English,  on  the  conception  of  personal  responsibility  and 
self-government;  the  German,  on  the  conception  of  a  "spon- 
taneous recognition  of  duty  and  right,"  which  as  he  goes  on 
to  say,  ''has  definitely  subordinated  itself  to  the  strong  feel- 
ing of  political  soUdarity."  ^  In  other  words  freedom  in  the 
German  sense  is  not  in  the  least  a  question  of  external  rela- 
tions, whether  to  nature  or  to  one's  social  environment.  It 
is  altogether  a  question  of  the  spirit  in  which  one  views  the 
situation.  The  prisoner  who  like  Socrates  conceives  it  to  be 
his  duty  to  remain  in  prison,  is  as  free  there  as  he  could  be 
anywhere  else.  The  individual  who  is  compactly  united 
with  his  fellows  or  rigidly  subordinated  to  authority  within 
the  organized  state  is  perfectly  ''free"  if  only  he  identifies 
his  will  with  the  state-will  that  puts  him  there.  Hence 
political  liberty,  equality  of  rank  or  private  privilege  are  not 
in  this  philosophy  regarded  as  values  of  the  highest  order  or 
as  at  all  indispensable  to  human  dignity. 

It  was  characteristic  of  the  Kantian  philosophy,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  to  divorce  morality  and  nature;  to  pro- 
claim the  uncompromising  rule  of  duty  in  the  one  field,  and 
the  uncompromising  rule  of  mechanical  law  in  the  other. 
Professor  Dewey  has  pointed  out  that  this  dualism  is  the 
most  evident  feature  of  German  life.  "Surely,"  he  says, 
"the  chief  mark  of  distinctively  German  civilization  is  its 
combination  of  self-conscious  idealism  with  unsurpassed 
technical  efficiency  and  organization  in  various  fields  of 

*  Op.  cit.j  p.  87. 


GERMAN  PROFESSION  OF  FAITH 


421 


action."  ^  But,  as  this  same  writer  has  shown,  the  Kantian 
dualism  is  not  left  unbridged.  The  Fichtean  and  Hegelian 
developments  of  the  principle  of  self-realization  make  it 
possible  to  regard  mechanical  science  and  technology  as  in 
some  sort  an  appHcation  of  duty.  The  inner  moral  will  is 
one  with  that  Absolute  Will  which  imposes  the  laws  of  nature, 
so  that  the  dutiful  consciousness  recognizes  them  not  as 
something  externally  imposed  but  as  its  own  creation.  Tech- 
nology and  mechanical  organization  as  the  conditions  of 
national  existence  and  power  become  a  part  of  the  self- 
realization  of  that  higher  corporate  entity  with  which  the 
dutiful  individual  identifies  himself. 

2.  The  Philosophy  of  the  State.  I  have  already  treated 
of  the  idealistic  philosophy  of  the  state  in  a  separate  chapter. 
I  desire  here  only  to  emphasize  the  acceptance  of  that  phil- 
osophy by  present  German  apologists. 

Fundamentally,  this  philosophy  consists  in  the  view  that 
the  state  has  a  spiritual  individuality,  a  personality,  which 
absorbs  and  exalts  its  members.  Thus  Professor  Edward 
Meyer  has  recently  said: 

"To  us  the  state  is  the  most  indispensable  as  well  as  the  highest 
requisite  to  our  earthly  existence.  ...  All  individualistic  endeavor 
.  .  .  must  be  unreservedly  subordinated  to  this  lofty  claim.  .  .  . 
The  state  .  .  .  eventually  is  of  infinitely  more  value  than  the  sum 
of  all  the  individuals  within  its  jurisdiction. 

"This  conception  of  the  state,  which  is  as  much  a  part  of  our  life 
as  is  the  blood  of  our  veins,  is  nowhere  to  be  found  in  the  English 
Constitution,  and  is  quite  foreign  to  English  thought,  and  to  that 
of  America  as  well."  ^ 

This  state-personality  is  not  only  superior  to  its  members, 
but  it  is  free  from  the  ordinary  moral  restraints  in  its  dealings 
with  other  states.  Thus  Professor  Meinecke,  having  traced 
to  "the  fundamental  ideas  of  German  idealism"  the  view 
that  states  and  nations  are  "great  historical  individualities," 
goes  on  to  show  that  "conflicts  between  private  morality  and 

*  German  Philosophy  and  Politics,  p.  28. 

2  England,  its  Political  Organization  and  Development  and  the  War  Against 
Germany,  trans.,  by  H.  S.  White,  pp.  30-31. 


422 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  interest  of  the  state  are  simply  unavoidable,"  and  that 
*'the  policy  of  power  and  state  egotism''  can  be  bounded 
only  by  the  principle  that  ''a  state  must  not  seek  to  acquire 
more  power  than  is  necessary  for  its  absolute  security  and 
the  free  development  of  Us  national  energies ''  ^  In  other  words, 
the  principle  of  self-reaUzation  is  here  extended  to  the  state, 
which  may  disregard  all  that  is  external  to  itself  and  consult 
only  the  demands  of  its  own  inner  ''energy."  It  follows 
that  international  relations  can  submit  to  no  higher  law  than 
that  of  struggle,  in  which  now  one  and  now  another  of  these 
monsters  gains  the  ascendancy.  These  ''spiritual,  Hfe- 
giving,  creative  forces,  moral  units  of  energy,"  as  Ranke  calls 
them,  "blossom  forth,  fill  the  world,  .  .  .  war  with  one  an- 
other, restrict  and  over-power  one  another.  In  their  mutual 
influence  upon  one  another,  in  their  sequence,  in  their 
existence,  their  disappearance,  in  their  resuscitation  to  a 
continually  increasing  potency,  higher  significance  and 
greater  extent,  Ues  the  secret  of  the  history  of  the  world."  ^ 
In  other  words,  such  international  law  as  there  is  is  the  Hege- 
lian logic  of  history;  ideahsm  culminates  in  poHtical  reahsm. 
Professor  Meinecke  sums  the  matter  up  as  follows : 

"It  was  Ranke  who  taught  us  to  honor  truth  and  to  regard  states 
as  living  personalities,  animated  by  vital  impulses  and  desire  for 
power;  they  are  all  proud,  covetous  of  honor,  and  egotistical,  but 
no  one  of  them  is  like  the  other.  ...  It  is  unavoidable,  he  teaches 
furthermore,  that  these  individualities  of  exuberant  strength 
should,  when  they  move  and  stretch,  come  into  conflict  with  each 
other,  now  in  peaceful  competition,  now  in  trials  of  strength  by 
war.  That  is  the  judgment  of  historical  realism  which  accepts  the 
policies  of  states  as  they  are,  not  as  they  might  be  according  to 
humanitarian  ideals."  ^ 

So  much  for  the  idealistic  ethics,  politics  and  philosophy  of 
history,  as  construed  by  those  who  now  appeal  to  it  for  the 
higher  justification  of  German  policy. 
,    I  shall  not  here  discuss  the  more  metaphysical  aspect  of 

1  Op.  cit.,  p.  568,  572,  573.    The  italics  are  mine. 

2  Quoted  by  Meinecke,  op.  cii.j  p.  578. 
»  Op,  cU.,  pp.  577-578. 


GERMAN  PROFESSION  OF  FAITH 


423 


this  philosophy.  We  have  already  seen  that  its  tendency 
is  to  identify  the  ultimate  reality  with  the  process  of  history 
as  this  culminates  in  the  political  and  cultural  ascendancy  of 
some  "present  bearer  of  the  world-spirit";  and  to  identity 
the  supreme  value  with  the  diversification  and  enrichment 
of  human  life  as  this  is  achieved  through  national  self- 
assertion  and  international  struggle.  This  deification  of 
historical  forces  serves  as  the  chief  religious  motive  for  those 
Germans  who  have  abandoned  Christian  orthodoxy.  Those 
who  have  not,  find  in  the  militant  and  tribal  Christianity  of 
the  Old  Testament  the  plain  man's  justification  for  this  same 
motive  of  national  self-assertion,  and  for  those  rugged  vir- 
tues which  effective  national  organization  requires.^  Let  us 
now  turn  to  the  more  material  and  worldly  motives  that 
according  to  some  judges  have  diverted  modern  Germany 
from  these  more  exalted  principles. 

II.    ANTI-IDEALISTIC  INFLUENCES 

I.  Commercialism.  Germany,  like  other  European  na- 
tions, was  profoundly  affected  by  the  great  modern  industrial 
revolution;  and  of  Germany's  remarkable  commercial  expan- 
sion at  the  turning  of  the  century,  there  is,  of  course,  not  the 
slightest  doubt.  We  have  to  do,  however,  not  with  this  un- 
disputed fact,  but  with  the  question  of  motives.  Shall  we  say 
that  Germany's  remarkable  commercial  expansion  is  evidence 
of  the  peculiar  strength  in  Germany  of  the  commercial  mo- 
tives; and  shall  we  find  in  this  fact  the  deeper  explanation 
of  the  course  of  her  national  affairs?  Certainly  the  German 
would  be  the  first  to  deny  it;  and  I  think  that  on  the  whole 
he  is  justified  in  denying  it.  The  commercial  motives,  I  be- 
lieve, are  much  more  fundamental  both  in  England  and  in  the 
United  States.  The  British  Empire,  as  has  often  been 
pointed  out,  is  not  the  result  of  national  ambition,  but  the 
accumulation  of  a  series  of  accidents.  The  fundamental 
thing  is  the  individual  Englishman's  proclivity  for  adventure 
and  trade,  combined  with  an  insular  people's  dependence 
on  the  sea.  Traderoutes  having  been  established,  the  British 
government  has  undertaken  to  protect  its  people  in  their  use. 


424 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Colonization  has  followed  trade  or  travel,  the  subjection  of 
native  populations  has  followed  colonization,  and  permanent 
imperial  rule  has  followed  the  superior  success  of  the  English- 
man in  dealing  with  the  peculiar  difficulties  to  which  such  ra- 
cial contacts  have  given  rise.  In  other  words,  the  Empire  is 
the  unexpected  result  of  private  and  sporadic  commercial  en- 
terprise. In  this  country  we  still  retain  the  pioneer's  feeling 
that  the  principal  occupation  of  man  is  to  exploit  nature;  and 
that  just  as  the  least  a  man  can  do  is  "to  make  a  living,"  so 
the  best  he  can  do  is  to  make  a  good  living.  Nature  having 
been  bountiful,  and  a  rapidly  increasing  population  having 
been  for  some  time  very  busy  making  as  much  of  a  living  as 
possible,  we  presently  find  ourselves  among  the  great  nations 
of  the  earth,  and  seek  to  expand  our  national  soul  accordingly. 
Both  these  motives,  the  Englishman's  interest  in  sea-faring 
trade,  and  the  American's  interest  in  exploiting  the  natural 
resources  of  his  country,  may  be  said  in  a  sense  to  be  com- 
mercial motives.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  any  observer 
would  characterize  German  life  in  such  terms.  Just  as  in 
Great  Britain  the  Empire  seems  to  be  a  by-product,  and  in 
America  the  nation,  so  in  Germany  commercial  expansion 
seems  to  be  the  by-product.  There  are  two  deeper  motives 
to  which  it  seems  to  be  traceable.  In  the  first  place  it  is  the 
outcome  of  scientific  and  technological  advancement  and  of 
thorough  and  widespread  technical  education.  In  this  sense 
commerce  is  intellectualized,  and  conceived  both  as  a  result 
and  as  a  part  of  Kultur.  In  the  second  place  German  com- 
mercial expansion  is  the  result  of  national  organization  and 
of  national  ambition.  Germany  is  the  home  of  national 
economics.  In  her  colonial  enterprises  it  seems  as  though 
the  ambition,  the  imperial  idea,  were  there  first;  and  as 
though  the  colonies  were  made  to  suit,  instead  of  growing  up 
as  a  consequence  of  individual  adventurousness  or  love  of 
wealth.  The  first  step  in  German  African  colonization,  I 
am  informed,  is  to  amaze  the  aborigenes  by  the  construction 
of  a  set  of  impressive  public  buildings;  and  the  second  step  is 
to  kill  the  aborigenes  in  the  most  approved  modern  manner. 
And  it  sometimes  happens  that  the  colony  gets  no  further. 


GERMAN  PROFESSION  OF  FAITH 


425 


Germany's  demand  for  a  place  in  the  sun  is  not  a  silent  re- 
lentless pressure  of  population  on  the  means  of  subsistence; 
it  is  the  very  conscious  and  loudly  proclaimed  pressure  of  the 
German  national  soul  on  the  German  national  body.  There 
is  room  in  the  German  home  land  for  the  German  population, 
but  not  for  the  German  idea.  And  it  is  certainly  the  German 
imperial  idea  rather  than  any  sordid  mercenary  consideration 
that  makes  Germany  unwilling  that  her  former  subjects  who 
have  settled  in  North  and  South  America  should  ever  be- 
come denationalized. 

In  short,  instead  of  explaining  German  nationalism  in 
terms  of  German  commercialism,  we  find  it  easier  and  more 
plausible  to  explain  German  commercialism  in  terms  of 
German  nationalism;  and  we  are  brought  back  to  that  na- 
tionalistic cult  for  which  the  idealistic  philosophy  appears  to 
provide  the  only  moral  or  religious  justification. 

2.  Naturalism.  Ever  since  the  middle  of  the  last  century 
the  naturalistic  philosophy  has  flourished  in  Germany. 
Vogt,  Moleschott,  Lange,  Feuerbach,  Biichner  and  in  our 
own  day  Ernst  Mach,  are  great  names  in  the  history  of  Ger- 
man thought.  The  vogue  of  Haeckel,  whose  Riddle  of  the 
Universe  is  said  to  have  reached  a  sale  of  240,000  volumes, 
was  one  of  the  features  of  German  intellectual  life  in  the 
period  just  prior  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  But  naturalism 
has  never  been  acknowledged  as  a  characteristic  German 
philosophy,  as  was  the  case  in  France  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury, and  in  both  France  and  England  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century.  Furthermore,  and  this  is  for  our  purposes  the 
crux  of  the  matter,  there  has  never  been  any  wide  acceptance 
in  Germany  of  the  utilitarian  ethics.  The  most  obvious 
moral  sequel  to  naturalism  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  empirical 
and  experimental  study  of  human  pleasures  and  satisfactions. 
The  primitive  datum  of  value  is  individual  feeling;  and  an 
ethics  that  is  governed  mainly  by  the  motive  of  science  will 
be  an  ethics  which  defines  right  and  wrong  in  terms  of  the 
effect  of  action  on  the  aggregate  of  such  feelings.  But  such 
an  ethics  is  in  Germany  conspicuous  only  by  its  absence. 
The  Darwinian  ethics  on  the  other  hand  is  much  more  highly 


426 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


developed  in  Germany  than  in  the  home  of  Darwin  himselL 
The  most  notorious  present-day  protagonist  of  this  ethics  is 
General  von  Bernhardi,  who  has  recently  expounded  it  as 
follows: 

"Wherever  we  look  in  nature  we  find  that  war  is  a  fundamental 
law  of  development.  This  great  verity,  which  has  been  recognized 
in  past  ages,  has  been  convincingly  demonstrated  in  modern  times 
by  Charles  Darwin.  He  proved  that  nature  is  ruled  by  an  unceas- 
ing struggle  for  existence,  by  the  right  of  the  stronger,  and  that  this 
struggle  in  its  apparent  cruelty  brings  about  a  selection  eUminating 
the  weak  and  the  unwholesome.  .  .  .  The  natural  law  to  which 
all  the  laws  of  nature  can  be  reduced,  is  the  law  of  struggle.  .  .  . 
From  the  first  beginning  of  life  war  has  been  the  basis  of  all  healthy 
development.  Struggle  is  not  merely  the  destructive,  but  the 
Ufe-giving  principle.  The  law  of  the  stronger  holds  good  every- 
where. Those  forms  survive  which  are  able  to  secure  for  them- 
selves the  most  favorable  conditions  of  Ufe.  The  weaker  succumb."  ^ 

But  this  teaching  is  not  in  Germany  confined  to  rude  and 
simple-minded  soldiers  Hke  Bernhardi.  Baron  von  Hiigel 
cites  the  example  of  Friedrich  Naumann,  the  former  Lutheran 
pastor  who  founded  the  ''National  Social"  movement,  and 
who  attempted  to  reconcile  Christianity  with  Bismarck  by 
rendering  unto  Jesus  the  personal  relations  between  in- 
dividuals, and  rendering  unto  Darwin  the  policies  and  rela- 
tions of  states.  In  his  Brieje  iiber  Religion^  this  writer  tells 
us  that, 

^''The  State  rests  upon  entirely  different  impulses  and  instincts 
from  those  which  are  cultivated  by  Jesus.  .  .  .  The  State  grows  up 
upon  the  will  to  make  others  subservient  to  oneself.  .  .  .  The  State 
is  not  love  but  constraint.  .  .  .  And  it  found  its  pattern  form  in 
Rome,  not  in  Nazareth.  .  .  .  Militarism  is  the  foundation  of  all 
order  in  the  State  and  of  all  prosperity  in  the  society  of  Europe.  .  .  . 
Hence,  we  either  dare  to  aim  at  being  without  a  State,  and  thus 
throw  ourselves  deliberately  into  the  arms  of  anarchy:  or  we  decide 
to  possess,  alongside  of  our  religious  creed,  a  political  creed  as 
well.  .  .  .    Hence  we  do  not  consult  Jesus,  when  we  are  concerned 

1  England  as  Germany's  Vassal.  Quoted  by  Mitchell,  Evolution  and  the  War^ 
PP-  3,  4. 


GERMAN  PROFESSION  OF   FAITH 


427 


with  things  which  belong  to  the  domain  of  the  construction  of  the 
State  and  of  Political  Economy.''  ^ 

Now  it  scarcely  needs  pointing  out  that  such  an  applica- 
tion of  naturalism  does  not  differ  in  effect  from  the  teachings 
of  Hegelianism.  Both  give  the  state  immunity  from  the 
principles  of  private  moraUty,  and  both  justify  the  gospel  of 
national  self-assertion  and  power.  But  while  the  one  uses 
harsh  terms,  the  other  uses  soft  terms.  The  one  conjures  in 
the  name  of  nature,  the  other  in  the  name  of  spirit.  And 
the  latter  has  therefore  proved  much  the  more  acceptable 
of  the  two  as  a  means  of  providing  a  high  and  soul-compel- 
ling justification  of  national  policy. 

3.  Nietzsche.  A  contemporary  English  writer  has  argued 
at  length  that  Nietzsche  is  not  to  be  held  responsible  for  the 
ideals  of  Germany.^  He  has  cited  the  well-known  facts  that 
Nietzsche  was  outspoken  in  his  condemnation  both  of  Ger- 
man national  characteristics  and  of  the  new  cult  of  nation- 
worship;  that  he  praised  France  and  dreamed  of  a  United 
States  of  Europe.3  All  of  this  is  beyond  dispute.  Never- 
theless there  remains  a  profound  moral  agreement  between 
the  teachings  of  Nietzsche  and  the  spirit  of  modern  Germany. 
Nietzsche,  like  the  other  teachers  honored  in  Germany,  was  a 
pronounced  opponent  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  of  the 
whole  humanitarian-democratic  movement  that  has  followed 
in  its  wake.  He  despised  pity  and  utiUty.  He  praised  the 
strength  that  proves  itself  by  struggle  and  ascendancy.  And 
although  Nietzsche  was  a  bitter  critic  of  Germany,  it  is  im- 
portant to  notice  who  were  the  Germans  of  his  day  whom 
Nietzsche  most  admired.  His  sister  Frau  Forster-Nietzsche 
is  authority  for  his  belief  that  the  redeeming  feature  of  this 
decadent  democratic  age,  the  happy  exception,  was  to  be 
found  in  the  Prussian  nobles  and  officer-caste,  who  held  them- 
selves superior  and  cultivated  the  heroic  virtues.  The  hope 
of  Germany,  he  thought,  lay  in  them  and  in  their  sons.  *    In 

1  Briefe,  sth  edition,  1910,  pp.  71,  72,  84,  86.    Quoted  by  von  Hiigel,  op.  ciU, 

pp.  54,  55,  58. 

2  H.  L.  Stewart:  Nietzsche  and  the  Ideals  of  Modern  Germany. 

3  Cf.  above,  pp.  167-169. 

*  Cf.  Forster-Nietzsche,  Leben,  II,  617. 


428 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


other  words,  the  Junker  in  whom  we  are  accustomed  to  find 
the  epitome  of  all  that  is  dangerous  to  the  world's  peace  and 
happiness,  was  to  Nietzsche  the  best  living  embodiment  of 
his  ideal  of  arrogance  and  power. 

But  more  important  than  what  Nietzsche  thought  of  Ger- 
many, is  what  Germans  of  the  present  generation  have 
thought  of  Nietzsche.  Here  there  seems  to  be  no  doubt.  I 
have  already  quoted  Professor  Francke's  judgment  that 
Nietzsche  has  been  one  of  the  three  great  spiritual  heroes  to 
the  youth  of  Germany.  The  vogue  of  Nietzsche  has  been 
enormous.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  pocket  edition  of 
Also  sprach  Zarathustra  should  have  been  a  favorite  source  of 
inspiration,  or  that  many  a  German  who  wished  to  be  forti- 
fied in  his  aggressive  self-reHance  should  have  fancied  him- 
self to  be  a  Superman;  or  that  Bernhardi  should  have  headed 
a  book  "from  the  Master";  or  that  a  recent  writer  should 
have  justified  the  present  war  as  affording  an  opportunity 
for  the  demonstration  of  the  Superman-Hke  qualities  of 
Hindenburg.^  It  is  true  that  there  is  in  this  a  certain  injus- 
tice to  Nietzsche.  His  Superman  was  an  intellectual  hero, 
rather  than  a  hero  of  muscle  or  iron.  And  Nietzsche  thought 
that  the  heroic  life  was  redeemed  by  suffering,  as  it  was  in 
his  own  case.  But  the  fact  remains  that  he  proclaimed  the 
will  to  power  to  be  the  central  motive  in  life;  and  that  he 
encouraged  men  to  acquire  strength  and  to  exercise  it  by  the 
subordination  of  the  weak.  His  readers  are  scarcely  to  be 
blamed  for  having  interpreted  power  in  terms  of  war,  and 
the  caste  of  Supermen  in  terms  of  a  superior  race  or  nation. 

4.  Political  Opportunism.  It  is  sometimes  argued  that 
present  German  ideals  are  the  result  of  historical  exigencies ; 
that  their  real  source  is  Bismarck,  and  that  Bismarck  was 
an  indispensable  instrument  of  national  existence  and  preser- 
vation. Professor  Troeltsch,  having  said  that  the  Germans 
are  a  monarchical  and  military  people  by  ancient  tradition, 
adds  that  they  would  in  any  case  have  had  to  become  so. 
*'A11  this,''  he  says,  *'is  forced  upon  us  by  fate,  which  has 
placed  us  in  the  centre  of  Europe ;  of  this  necessity  we  have 

*  Cf.  Figgis:  Will  to  Freedom,  p.  214. 


GERMAN  PROFESSION  OF  FAITH 


429 


made  a  virtue."^  The  Germans  had  a  long  and  bitter 
experience  of  helplessness  and  disunion.  From  this  they 
were  rescued  by  Prussian  militarism  and  by  the  imperial 
poHcy  and  ruthless  poUtical  opportunism  of  Bismarck. 
Having  so  long  suffered  from  weakness,  they  came  to  worship 
unity  and  force  as  the  means  of  security.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  they  were  dissatisfied  with  that  empire  of  the  air  which 
Heine  allotted  to  them.  ^  ^'In  the  Eighteenth  Century," 
says  Treitschke,  ^'Hterary  and  artistic  preoccupations  were 
uppermost,  and  not  till  then  did  our  people  gradually  begin 
to  descend  from  Heaven  to  Earth."  ^  The  unsympathetic 
observer  is  prompted  to  declare  that  they  have  been  de- 
scending ever  since  and  are  on  their  way  to  an  even  ulterior 
destination! 

In  our  own  day  the  same  motive  of  political  necessity  has 
appeared  in  the  widespread  and  genuine  dread  of  Russia  and 
of  the  pan-Slavic  movement;  and  in  the  suspicious  fear  of  the 
alliance  of  Russia  with  England  and  France.  This  motive 
was  undoubtedly  a  powerful  factor  in  inducing  the  German 
people  to  accede  to  the  present  war.  The  German  has 
learned  to  think  of  himself  as  encircled  by  implacable  foes, 
and  as  therefore  justified  in  cultivating  force  and  using  it 
when  he  can.  The  method  of  militarism  and  unscrupulous 
statecraft,  once  accepted  as  the  condition  of  national  exist- 
ence, ceases  to  appear  objectionable,  and  is  easily  converted 
into  an  instrument  of  aggrandizement  and  conquest.  The 
German,  vividly  realizing  that  Germany  as  a  political  entity 
is  the  work  of  such  shameless  conquerors  and  intriguers  as 
Frederick  the  Great  and  Bismarck,  cannot  condemn  them  as 
the  French  condemn  Napoleon.  He  cannot  condemn  his 
country's  makers  without  condemning  his  country.  And  in 
so  far  as  he  justifies  them,  he  cannot  easily  condemn  their 
modern  imitators  of  the  Pangerman  League. 

*  Modern  Germany,  pp.  70,  71. 

8  "  Franzosen  und  Russen  gehort  das  Land 

Das  Meer  gehort  den  Britten; 

Wir  aber  besitzen  im  Luftreich  des  Traums 

Die  Herrschaft  unbeschritten." 
8  Politics,  Vol.  I,  p.  51.  ".  • 


430 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


But  in  admitting  the  influence  on  the  German  mind  of 
what  he  deems  to  be  the  lesson  of  history  and  the  counsel 
of  necessity,  we  do  not  in  the  least  contradict  the  influence  of 
the  idealistic  philosophy.  No  one  argues  from  mere  neces- 
sity if  he  can  help  it.  Nor  can  one  draw  from  the  national 
exigencies  of  the  past  a  principle  sufficient  to  define  the 
national  hopes  and  ideals.  The  idealistic  philosophy  affords 
a  principle  that  is  both  positive  and  for  all  time.  It  justifies 
Bismarck  not  as  a  mere  creature  of  necessity  or  victim  of 
circumstance;  it  justifies  him  as  the  creator  of  the  supreme 
embodiment  of  the  world-spirit,  as  one  who  understood  in- 
stinctively the  great  law  that  the  state  is  superior  to  the  code 
of  private  morahty,  and  as  one  who  expressed  in  his  exclusive 
regard  for  German  interests  the  great  right  of  every  nation 
to  the  unhampered  expansion  of  its  ^^ moral  energies.'' 

III.    THE  RECONCILIATION 

It  has  already  become  apparent  that  the  distinctive 
feature  of  German  Ufe  is  not  an  idealistic  disregard  of  nature 
or  practical  interests  and  exigencies,  nor  a  materialistic  in- 
difference to  the  call  of  the  spirit,  but  the  idealization  of  the 
very  solid  advantages  of  wealth  and  power.  Bergson,  while 
insisting  that  the  fundamental  motives  of  German  policy  are 
ambition  and  pride,  concludes  by  saying  that  ''none  the  less 
is  it  true  that  perverse  ambition,  once  erected  into  theory, 
feels  more  at  ease  in  working  itself  out  to  the  end."^  It  is  his 
idealistic  philosophy  that  enables  the  German  to  feel  at  ease 
and  to  work  his  poUcy  out  to  the  end.  In  a  passage  on  "  the 
old  problem:  'What  is  German?'  "  Nietzsche  refers  to  in- 
stances in  German  history  that  he  thinks  are  exceptions  to 
the  spirit  of  the  race.  These  are  "Goethe's  Paganism  with 
a  good  conscience"  and  "Bismarck's  Macchiavelism  .  .  . 
with  a  good  conscience,"  as  contrasted  with  the  metaphysical 
profundities  of  Leibnitz,  Kant  and  Hegel.^  In  other  words, 
the  one  thing  that  is  not  German  is  to  be  simply  pagan 
or  Macchiavelian.     The  German  must  fortify  himself  with 

1  "Life  and  Matter  at  War,"  Hibbert  Journal^  April,  1915,  p.  471. 
*  Joyful  Wisdom,  357. 


GERMAN  PROFESSION  OF  FAITH 


431 


metaphysics.     And  he  has  found  in  idealism  a  philosophy 
peculiarly  apt  for  the  purpose. 

This  is  the  substance  of  Jean-Christophe's  meditations  on 
the  evolution  of  Germany: 

"  Especially  since  the  German  victories  they  had  been  striving  to 
make  a  compromise,  a  revolting  intrigue  between  their  new  power 
and  their  old  principles.  The  old  idealism  had  not  been  renounced. 
.  .  .  They  were  content  with  a  forgery.  .  .  .  When  they  were 
defeated,  they  said  that  Germany's  ideal  was  humanity.  Now  that 
they  had  defeated  others,  they  said  that  Germany  was  the  ideal  of 
humanity.  When  other  countries  were  more  powerful,  they  said, 
with  Lessing,  that  ^patriotism  is  a  heroic  weakness  which  it  is  well 
to  he  without  J  and  they  called  themselves  ^citizens  of  the  world* 
Now  that  they  were  in  the  ascendant,  they  could  not  enough 
despise  the  Utopias  'd  la  Francaise,*  .  .  .  Force  had  become  holy 
now  that  it  was  on  their  side.  ...  In  truth,  Germany  had  suffered 
so  much  for  centuries  from  having  idealism  and  no  fame  that  she 
had  every  excuse  after  so  many  trials  for  making  the  sorrowful 
confession  that  at  all  costs  Force  must  be  hers.  .  .  'The  chief 
characteristic  of  Germany/  said  Moser,  more  than  a  century  ago, 
'is  obedience.'  And  Madame  de  Stael:  'They  have  submitted 
doughtily.  They  find  philosophic  reasons  for  explaining  the  least 
philosophic  theory  in  the  world :  respect  for  power  and  the  chastening 
emotion  of  fear  which  changes  that  respect  into  admiration.''  "  ^ 

The  readiness  with  which  the  traditional  idealism  lends 
itself  to  this  use  should  now  be  apparent.  The  Kantian 
idea  of  duty  is  through  its  very  formaUsm  and  barrenness 
convertible  into  a  cult  of  miUtary  discipline  and  political 
subserviency.  "The  sage  of  Konigsberg,"  says  a  writer 
already  quoted,  "has  through  the  formula  of  the  categorical 
imperative  raised  the  conception  of  duty  to  the  dignity  of  a 
guide  of  conduct;  in  Germany  miUtary  life,  and  in  the  Ger- 
man public  and  official  system,  with  the  Prussian  official  as 
the  model,  this  idea  has  found  its  embodiment."  ^  "The 
moral  law  of  the  categorical  imperative,  which  the  state  sets 
up,"  says  Professor  Meinecke,  "demanded  action  and  work, 
and  devotion  to  the  common  weal."  ^ 

*  Rolland:  Jean-Christophe,  pp.  565,  566. 

*  J.  A.  Lux:  Deutschland  als  Welterzieher,  p.  13. 
'  Op.  cit.,  p.  569. 


432 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Fichte's  Reden  an  die  Deutsche  Nation,  delivered  in  the 
Berlin  Academy  of  Science  on  Sunday  evenings  from  Dec.^  13, 
1807  to  March  20,  1808,  were  an  appeal  to  prostrate  nation- 
ality. They  were  primarily  a  moral  appeal,  and  not  a  call  to 
arms.  He  pointed  out  what  nationaUty  could  do  as  a  moral 
force,  and  he  not  unnaturally  used  every  means  to  lead  the 
German  to  think  of  what  distinguished  him  and  set  him 
apart.  He  strove  to  make  Germany  self-conscious.  It  is 
quite  true  that  it  was  a  noble  appeal,  and  what  every  lover 
of  his  people  would  wish  to  do  under  like  conditions.  The 
sequel  proves  not  that  Fichte  was  ignoble,  but  that  his  phil- 
osophy contained  seeds  of  error.  It  proves  the  danger  of  a 
philosophy  which  teaches  the  absolute  uniqueness  of  one 
people,  and  bids  a  people  think  only  of  its  own  soHdarity  and 
self-expression.  Having  reached  that  point,  it  is  easy  to  pass 
on  and  to  identify  the  national  entity  with  the  state  or  with 
the  existing  system  of  poUtical  authorities.  Hegel  doubtless 
thought  of  the  state  as  an  order  creating  freedom,  and  con- 
ditioning the  higher  activities  of  art,  religion  and  philosophy. 
But  in  elevating  the  state  above  the  individual,  and  making 
it  the  subject  of  superior  values,  such  a  philosophy  puts  a 
premium  on  whatever  magnifies  the  state.  Bismarck  and  the 
cult  of  might  readily  turned  this  to  their  use.  And  it  was 
Fichte  who  in  this  same  noble  appeal  proclaimed  Germany 
as  the  special  representative  of  the  absolute.  Each  nation  is 
"the  incorporation  of  a  special  ideal  which  could  not  be  de- 
stroyed without  loss  to  the  Universe."  But  Germany  is  the 
nation.  Nothing  could  afford  a  plainer  warrant  for  the 
Pangermanists.    As  von  Hligel  says, 

"Thus  did  the  Lion  prepare  a  feast  for  all  the  beasts  of  the  field, 
even  the  field-mice  and  the  moles  had  their  seat  and  share  assigned, 
each  strictly  according  to  its  intrinsic  merits.  But  then  at  the 
feast  the  Lion  took,  in  the  most  careful  attention  to  his  culturally 
graduated  scheme,  his  'true,'  i.e.,  the  Lion's  share."  ^ 

In  keeping  with  this  idea  the  successors  of  Fichte  have 
proclaimed  the  superiority  of  European  over  Asiatic  nations. 

1  The  German  Soul,  p.  gS, 


GERMAN   PROFESSION  OF  FAITH 


433 


The  **  Occidental  community  of  nations  alone  is  our  Reason, 
it  alone  forms  a  real  historical  complex  of  life  possessing 
actual  significance  for  us."  ^  Hence  in  the  Boxer  campaign, 
after  the  Kaiser's  exhorting  his  troops  to  rival  the  fright- 
fulness  of  the  Huns,  women  and  children  looking  on  at  the 
driU  of  German  troops  were  deliberately  shot  down  in  order 
to  induce  them  to  bring  pressure  on  their  government.^  And 
why  not?  For  in  this  teaching  all  that  falls  outside  that 
unit  of  life  which  feels  itself  to  be  superior  and  is  seeking  an 
outlet  for  its  moral  energies,  is  mere  hindrance  to  be  swept 
away,  or  a  mere  thing  to  be  used. 

To  Germans  who  are  exalted  by  this  sense  of  a  spiritual 
mission  there  is  something  petty  and  sordid  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon's  calculations  of  utility  and  happiness;  something  soft 
and  irresolute  in  the  Frenchman's  cultivation  of  the  social 
sentiments.  But  we  who  are  not  Germans  turn  with  joyous 
relief  to  these  more  homely  and  humane  philosophies.  What- 
ever a  fellow- German  may  feel,  no  mere  outsider  can  be 
expected  to  respond  with  cordiality  or  admiration  to  a 
national  faith  that  can  move  one  of  its  devotees  to  say: 

"Goethe's  practical  idealism  and  Nietzsche's  spiritualism, 
mediated  by  the  Leitmotiv  of  a  well-equipped,  brazen,  inflexible 
Siegfried-will,  as  such  I  see  the  new  German  nationality  and  hear 
its  cry  of  victory  as  it  goes  resounding  through  the  peoples  of  the 
earth  to  meet  the  future."  ^ 

*  Troeltsch,  "Personal  Morality  and  State  Morality,"  Neue  Rundschau, 
Feb.  1916,  p.  152. 

^  Statement  made  to  Baron  von  Hfigel  by  a  Scotch  oflScer  who  was  a  wit- 
ness.    Cf.  The  German  Soul,  pp.  99-100. 

*  Lux,  op.  cit.,  p.  43. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 
FRENCH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 

The  better  understanding  of  France  has  for  every  Anieri- 
can  become  a  sacred  duty.    While  every  American  school 
boy  thinks  of  France  as  our  traditional  ally  and  fellow- 
democracy,  and  while  every  high-spirited  man  American  or 
otherwise,  must  have  felt  at  least  a  sentimental  interest  m  a 
country  which  has  played  so  romantic  a  role  m  ]^story  ^^^J^ 
neglect  of  French  hterature  and  philosophy,  and  our  blind- 
ness to  the  true  spirit  of  France,  is  as  striking  as  it  is  deplor- 
able     It  is  partly  the  result  of  our  racial  composition.  ^  Uur 
original  stock  came  from  Great  Britain;  and  our  later  immi- 
grant population  has  come  from   Germany,  Scandinavia 
Italy,  Austria,  Russia  and  the  Balkan  states  -  from  almost 
even^here  but  France.    It  is  partly  a  result  of  education, 
our  universities  and  scholarly  activities  having  been  pro- 
foundly influenced  by  Germany.    But  the  mam  reason  for 
the  popular  misconception  of  France,  a  misconcepUon  which 
America  shares  with  all  the  world,  is  the  habit  of  judging 
France  by  what  happens  most  to  interest  and  amuse  us.     io 
the  average  tourist  France  is  Paris,  and  Pans  is  the  place 
where  he  buys  his  clothes  and  where,  to  borrow  a  phrase  from 
a  current  "movie''  scenario,  he  "registers  gayety  verging  on 
the  loose."    To  the  man  who  is  tired  of  being  busy,  or  ot 
being  good,  Paris  suggests  being  off  duty,  or  the  charm  of  the 
forbidden  indulgence.    It  suggests  what  James  has  called  a 
"moral   hoUday."    To   jaded   and   habit-ridden   mankind 
Paris  suggests  the  bizarre  in  art,  the  excesses  of  reahsm  or 
impressionism,  or  the  absurdities  of  post-impressiomsm  and 

futurism.  ,  ^      ,  - 

In  part,  then,  the  reputation  of  France  has  suffered  from 
being  associated  with  certain  moods  or  passing  phases  m  the 
experience  of  those  who  have  been  superficiaUy  acquainted 

434 


FRENCH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


435 


with'^her.  We  are  apt  to  think  France  frivolous  or  decadent 
merely  because  so  many  Germans  or  Englishmen  or  Ameri- 
cans have  gone  to  Paris  to  spend  the  more  frivolous  or  de- 
cadent hours  of  their  lives.  In  contrast  with  the  sobriety 
which  the  traveller  has  left  behind  him  at  home,  and  in  con- 
trast with  her  own  glorious  past,  the  Parisian  France  of 
to-day  symbolizes  the  unhealthy  brilliancy  of  an  over-ripe 
culture,  of  what  the  world  before  the  war  had  agreed  to  call 
''that  worn-out  civilization,  that  perishing  little  Greece." 

The  Frenchman's  resentment  of  this  judgment,  and  at  the 
same  time  his  feeling  that  in  a  sense  France  is  herself  re- 
sponsible for  it,  is  eloquently  expressed  in  the  words  with 
which  RoUand's  Oliver  answers  Jean-Christophe : 

"You  see  the  shadow,  the  reflected  light  of  day:  you  have  never 
seen  the  inward  day,  our  age-old  immemorial  spirit.  .  .  .  How  dare 
you  slander  a  people  who  for  more  than  a  thousand  years  have  been 
living  in  action  and  creation,  a  people  that  has  graven  the  world  in 
its  own  image  through  Gothic  art,  and  the  seventeenth  century, 
and  the  Revolution  —  a  people  that  has  twenty  times  passed 
through  the  ordeal  of  fire,  and  plunged  into  it  again,  and  twenty 
times  has  come  to  life  again  and  never  yet  has  perished!  .  .  .  Not 
one  of  you  has  any  idea  of  the  real  France  living  under  oppression, 
or  of  the  reserve  of  vitality  in  the  French  provinces,  or  of  the  great 
mass  of  the  people  who  go  on  working  heedless  of  the  uproar  and 
pother  made  by  their  masters  of  a  day.  .  .  .  Ill-omened  Paris!  No 
doubt  good  also  has  come  of  it  —  by  gathering  together  all  the 
forces  of  the  French  mind  and  genius.  But  the  evil  it  has  done  is 
at  least  equal  to  the  good:  and  in  a  time  like  the  present  the  good 
quickly  turns  to  evil.  A  pseudo-elite  fastens  on  Paris  and  blows 
the  loud  trumpet  of  publicity  and  the  voices  of  all  the  rest  of  France 
are  drowned.  More  than  this:  France  herself  is  deceived  by  it: 
she  is  scared  and  silent  and  fearfully  locks  away  her  own  ideas."  ^ 

Now  it  has  to  be  admitted  that  although  Paris  does  not 
represent  France,  nevertheless  it  is  characteristic  of  France 
that  it  should  be  misrepresented  by  a  Paris.  In  no  other 
modern  society  is  life  so  focalized  and  centralized  in  its 
metropolis.     Every  intellectual  activity  and  personal  aspira- 

*  Rolland,  Jean-Christophe  in  Paris ^  pp.  323-324. 


436 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


tion  culminates  in  Paris.  In  no  other  modern  society,  there- 
fore, is  it  equally  possible  that  the  general  Ufe  should  be  so 
profoundly  affected  by  the  swift  changes  of  feeling,  thought, 
or  even  of  authority  that  take  place  within  one  highly  con- 
centrated community.  French  life  is  pecuUarly  unified,  and 
Paris  is  its  central  nervous  organ,  where  this  life  is  most 
consciously  registered,  and  from  which  its  dominant  emo- 
tions and  its  crucial  decisions  emanate. 

Even  so,  we  have  not  yet  explained  Paris.  We  have  not 
explained  why  those  who  have  gone  to  France  for  pleasure 
should  have  found  it  there;  or  why  even  those  who  have 
thought  France  to  be  decaying  should  have  acknowledged 
her  Athenian  brilliancy.  We  have  not  explained  the  ex- 
traordinary power  of  recuperation  by  which  this  charge  of 
decadence  has  again  in  the  present  war  been  proved  a  slander. 
On  these  and  on  other  Uke  questions  I  hope  to  throw  some 
little  ray  of  Ught,  confident  that  whether  we  succeed  or  not, 
this  is  to-day  one  of  the  things  with  which  you  and  I  can 
most  profitably  occupy  ourselves. 

I.    HUMANISM 

The  term  "humanism''  is  commonly  applied  to  the  civil- 
ization of  ancient  Athens  and  to  that  of  the  ItaUan  Renais- 
sance. I  propose  to  apply  it  in  the  same  sense  to  the  civil- 
ization of  modern  France.  It  means  the  cultivation  of  man's 
natural  powers  to  the  highest  possible  pitch  of  perfection. 
Humanism  may  develop  under  the  control  of  some  unifying 
ideal;  as  Athenian  humanism  grew  up  under  the  ideal  of 
bodily  and  civic  health,  and  Italian  humanism  under  the 
ideal  of  the  Christian  Ufe.  But  the  tendency  of  humanism 
is  toward  decentralization.  Any  unifying  ideal  must  exer- 
cise restraint  upon  the  several  human  capacities,  and  the 
interest  in  perfecting  these,  each  in  its  own  terms,  begets  an 
impulse  to  Hberate  them  from  such  restraint.  Thus  hu- 
manism if  left  to  itself  has  tended  to  physical  and  political 

weakness. 

I.  The  Sensibilities  and  the  Intellect.     The  most  evident 
sign  of  French  humanism  is  the  love  of  art.     In  the  Nine- 


FRENCH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


437 


teenth  Century  France  has  led  the  way  both  in  literature  and 
in  the  plastic  arts.  And  nowhere  has  there  been  so  pro- 
nounced a  tendency  to  refine  the  artistic  sensibilities  and  to 
exploit  creative  genius  without  ulterior  motive;  to  carry  the 
cult  of  form  to  every  length,  to  try  out  every  untried  possi- 
bility, to  free  each  particular  artistic  interest  from  moral, 
political  or  reUgious  control  in  order  to  see  to  what  extremes 
it  can  reach  if  left  entirely  to  itself.  This,  I  take  it,  is  the 
explanation  both  of  the  brilliancy  of  French  culture,  and 
also  of  its  virtuosity,  its  extravagance  and  its  irresponsi- 
bility. The  sum  of  these  excesses,  a  sort  of  looseness  that 
comes  from  the  over-intensive  cultivation  of  special  gifts  and 
modes  of  taste,  is  what  we  so  inaptly  term  "decadence." 

Where  this  humanistic  impulse  is  strong  it  is  not  surprising 
that  literature  and  the  drama  should  fail  to  represent  the 
normal  life  of  the  community.  The  life  which  is  depicted  on 
the  French  stage  or  in  the  French  novel  is  not  intended  to 
reveal  either  French  habits  or  French  ideals.  It  is  selected 
because  it  is  interesting  and  because  it  lends  itself  to  dramatic 
and  literary  effect.  It  proves  not  the  French  are  immoral, 
but  that  French  art  is  unmoral;  that  is,  that  it  is  pursued 
for  its  own  sake  and  enjoyed  in  its  own  way. 

It  is  French  humanism  that  has  made  France  so  peculiarly 
receptive  to  science,  and  to  every  form  of  iconoclasm.  It  is 
her  humanism  that  constitutes  her  Latin  quality,  her  heritage 
from  antiquity  and  from  the  Renaissance.  With  her  hu- 
manism is  associated  that  quickness  of  perception,  that  rapid 
play  of  wit  and  imagination  that  the  world  calls  volatile  and 
fickle.  It  is  French  humanism  that  has  made  France  the 
great  source  of  change  and  novelty;  and  that  has  made  her 
the  great  exponent  of  modernity  in  all  the  things  of  the 
spirit. 

The  intellect,  like  the  senses,  may  be  thought  of  as  a 
faculty  of  creation  and  appreciation;  and  with  this  faculty 
the  modern  French  are  perhaps  more  highly  endowed  than 
any  other  European  people.  ^  This  faculty  too  is  capable  of 
its  own  intensive  cultivation.     It  is  possible  to  make  a  point, 

^  Cf.  Benjamin  Kidd,  Social  Evolution,  p.  ^07. 


438 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


or  even  a  fetish,  of  sharp  definition,  analysis  and  cogent 
reasoning.  This  is  a  French  trait,  as  it  was  a  Greek  trait. 
It  is  commonly  acknowledged  in  the  judgment  that  the 
French  excel  in  logic  and  in  mathematics;  or  in  the  judgment 
that  though  they  may  over-simpUfy  a  problem,  they  are  sur- 
passingly clear  in  their  formulation  and  solution  of  it.  When 
the  French  use  the  intellect  they  try  to  be  true  to  the  canons 
of  the  intellect,  and  to  follow  it  uncompromisingly  wherever 
it  may  lead.  They  do  not  isolate  the  intellect,  in  the  sense 
of  using  it  only  in  a  realm  of  abstractions.  On  the  contrary, 
they  are  peculiarly  addicted  to  the  application  of  logic  to  life. 
But  when  they  do  so  they  do  not  shrink  from  the  argument 
because  they  fear  the  conclusion.  In  other  words,  the  French 
are  intellectually  honest  to  an  unusually  high  degree.  Pro- 
fessor Barrett  Wendell,  whose  France  of  To-day,  is  quite  the 
best  book  by  which  an  outsider  may  gain  a  sympathetic 
understanding  of  French  Ufe,  reminds  us  that  the  English 
and  American  ideal  of  candor  is  ''intimately  personal."  The 
candid  man  is  the  man  who  tells  us  all  his  troubles.  We 
suspect  the  Frenchman  of  lacking  candor  because  he  ex- 
hibits reticence  on  this  score.  But  the  Frenchman  has  his 
own  ideal  of  candor,  which  is  "intellectual  rather  than  per- 
sonal." ''It  admits,"  this  writer  goes  on  to  say,  "a  degree 
of  personal  reticence  which  by  tempers  like  ours,  might  well 
be  held  to  pass  beyond  the  extreme  of  prudence;  but  when  it 
confronts  problems,  whether  of  Hfe  or  of  philosophy,  it 
rigidly  demands  a  degree  of  intellectual  frankness  which  our 
less  alert  mental  habit  has  hitherto  allowed  us  cheerfully  to 
neglect."  ^ 

2.  Aptitude  for  Expression.  Closely  allied  to  this  hu- 
manistic cult  of  the  special  human  faculties,  and  perhaps 
springing  from  the  same  fundamental  motive,  is  the  French- 
man's emphasis  on  expression.  Here  also  the  trait  is  best 
known  to  outsiders  through  its  excesses.  The  Frenchman 
is  the  man  who  cannot  think  without  talking,  and  who  cannot 
talk  without  gesticulating.  Jean-Christophe  refers  to  the 
"eternal  loquacity"  of  the  French,  and  says  that  they  "have 

1  Pp.  150, 151. 


FRENCH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


439 


no  more  in  their  minds  and  hearts  than  they  show,  and  often 
not  even  as  much."  ^  In  so  far  as  this  is  true  it  comes  of 
regarding  thought  as  a  creative  activity  which  like  the 
imagination  has  its  own  proper  modes  of  expression.  One 
of  these  is  literature.  But  oral  speech  as  well  as  written 
speech  has  its  felicities  of  form;  and  to  a  people  of  taste  un- 
couth speech  will  be  as  offensive  as  slovenly  writing.  Just 
as  you  can  be  sure  in  advance  that  a  French  book  will  be  well 
written,  so  you  can  be  sure  that  whatever  a  Frenchman  has 
to  say,  or  however  much  he  has  to  say,  he  will  say  it  well. 
France  is  the  place  where  conversation  is  practised  as  a  fine 
art,  and  where  even  university  lecturers  and  public  speakers 
are  not  indifferent  to  the  precision  and  beauty  of  their  utter- 
ances. 

Manners,  dress  and  all  forms  of  social  intercourse  exhibit 
in  France  this  same  regard  for  comeliness  and  style.  There 
is,  in  short,  an  art  of  life  in  all  its  varied  activities.  The 
sociality  of  the  French,  which  is  one  of  their  great  distinguish- 
ing traits,  is,  I  think,  in  a  large  measure  traceable  to  this 
sense  that  nothing  is  done  until  it  has  found  a  fitting 
and  acceptable  outward  expression.  When  the  Frenchman 
thinks,  he  conceives  himself  to  be  communicating  something 
to  somebody.  It  has  been  said  that  "  a  Frenchman  needs  to 
know  what  his  neighbor  thinks  before  he  knows  what  he 
thinks,  himself,  so  that  he  can  think  the  same  thing  or  the 
opposite."  2  This  is  not  due  either  to  subserviency  or  to 
contentiousness,  but  to  the  need  of  feeling  his  intellectual 
milieu.  He  wants  to  know  what  other  people  think,  as  the 
conversationalist  wants  to  know  what  others  have  said,  so 
that  he  may  make  himself  intelligible  and  so  that  he  may 
take  part  in  the  general  interchange  of  ideas.  Hence  the 
urbanity  of  French  literature  and  art,  its  tone  of  courtesy 
and  its  objectivity.  It  is  not  like  a  soliloquy,  an  exclama- 
tion or  a  gesture,  a  means  of  getting  rid  of  something;  it  is 
rather  a  means  of  conveying  something.     And  hence,  I  think, 

^  Remain  Rolland:  Jean-Christophe,  pp.  443-4;  Jean-Christophe  in  Paris, 
p.  78. 

*  Rolland,  op,  cit.,  p.  93. 


440 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  proverbial  clearness  of  French  thought.  The  Frenchman 
instead  of  saying,  ''I  have  this  idea  but  cannot  express  it/' 
would  be  inclined  to  feel  that  unless  he  could  express  it  in- 
telligibly he  had  no  idea  at  all. 

II.    CHIVALRY 

We  have  seen  that  the  Germans  sought  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century  to  overcome  their  excessive  fondness  for  cosmopoli- 
tan culture,  and  to  cultivate  a  wholesome  respect  for  national 
force.     This    effort    proved    rather    over-successful.     The 
French  have  likewise  suffered  from  an  amiable  fault,  but 
they  appear  to  have  overcome  the  fault  without  ceasing  to  be 
amiable.     Their  traditional  fault  is  a  somewhat  abstract  and 
quixotic  idealism.     They  have  what  Paul  Sabatier  describes 
as  *'an  instinctive  enthusiasm  ...  for  general  ideas  and 
generous  causes."     Their  loyalty  to  general  ideas  has  often 
led  them,  as  in  the  case  of  the  French  Revolution,  to  pay  too 
little  attention  to  human  nature  and  to  the  lessons  of  ex- 
perience and  history.     In  the  Nineteenth  Century  their  con- 
sciousness of  this  fault  led  to  the  cultivation  of  a  keener  sense 
for  facts;  and  to  the  attempt  to  associate  their  revolutionary 
zeal  with  a  sober  study  of  psychology  and  sociology.     And 
in  the  present  war  they  have  learned  to  take  a  leaf  from  the 
book  of  their  enemy.     They  have  come  to  understand  that 
neither  enthusiasm  nor  even  a  good  cause  affords  any  guar- 
antee of  victory  unless  combined  with  prudence,  organization 
and  mechanical  skill.     The  war  of  1870  and  the  persistently 
threatening  attitude  of  Germany  have  begotten  a  sobering 
sense  of  danger  which  tends  to  repress  all  extravagances  of 
gallantry.     When  early  in  the  present  war  a  class  from  the 
officer's  school  of  Saint  Cyr  took  a  solemn  oath  to  go  into 
battle  in  dress  uniform,  with  white  gloves  and  with  plumes 
in  their  hats,  their  gallant  martyrdom  was  not  applauded  in 
France.     It  evoked  the  feeling  that ''  this  is  French,  but  it  is 

not  war.*' 

The  fact  remains,  however,  that  such  folly  was  character- 
istically French,  and  that  the  fine  quality  of  it  has  been 
retained  even  when  its  suicidal  and  fratricidal  forms  have 


FRENCH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


441 


been  repressed.  Consider,  for  instance,  the  example  cited 
by  Barres  of  the  young  officer  who  on  leaving  for  the  front 
made  this  last  request  of  his  mother:  ^' When  the  troops  come 
home  victorious  through  the  Arc  de  Triomphe,  if  I  am  no 
longer  amongst  them,  put  on  your  finest  apparel  and  be 
there."  ^  This  is  as  much  as  to  say,  as  an  ancient  Greek 
might  have  said,  that  a  gallant  death  in  a  noble  cause  is  not 
a  calamity,  nor  even  a  deplorable  necessity,  but  an  occasion 
of  rejoicing.  The  Frenchman  is  not  only  willing  to  suffer 
for  his  cause,  but  he  feels  that  the  suffering  is  needed  to  re- 
deem what  would  otherwise  be  mere  violence  and  cruelty. 
The  cause  must  be  served  not  with  the  ambition  that  takes, 
but  with  the  love  that  gives.  Even  in  these  soberer  and  more 
realistic  times  Barres  can  still  say: 

"It  is  not  in  France  that  wars  are  entered  upon  for  the  sake  of 
the  spoils.  Wars  for  the  sake  of  honor  and  glory?  Yes,  at  times. 
But  to  carry  the  nation  with  it  the  p)eople  must  feel  itself  a  cham- 
pion in  the  cause  of  God,  a  knight  upholding  justice.  .  .  .  French- 
men fighting  in  defense  of  their  country  have  believed  almost 
always  that  they  were  suffering  and  enduring  that  all  humanity 
might  be  the  better.  They  fight  for  their  territory  filled  with 
sepulchres  and  for  Heaven  where  Christ  reigns,  and  up  to  which 
at  least  our  aspirations  rise.  They  die  for  France,  as  far  as  the 
purposes  of  France  may  be  identified  with  the  purposes  of  God  or 
indeed  with  those  of  humanity.  Thus  it  is  that  they  wage  war  in 
the  spirit  of  martyrs."  ^ 

That  the  spirit  of  chivalry  is  not  dead  in  the  land  of  Roland, 
Godfrey  of  Bouillon,  St.  Louis  and  Bayard  is  best  proved,  I 
think,  by  the  Frenchman's  feeling  regarding  Alsace-Lorraine. 
To  the  outside  world  it  oftens  appears  to  be  no  better  than 
revenge  and  covetousness.  But  to  the  Frenchman  it  is 
largely  a  matter  of  being  loyal  to  those  who  have  been  loyal, 
and  who  have  suffered  for  their  loyalty.  In  187 1  the  repre- 
sentatives of  Alsace-Lorraine  said  to  France:  ''Your  brothers 
in  these  two  provinces,  who,  for  the  time  being,  are  separated 
from  the  one  common  family,  will  ever  retain  a  filial  affection 

^  Barres:  The  Undying  Spirit  of  France,  p.  55. 
*  Ibid.,  pp.  47-48. 


442 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


for  absent  France,  until  she  comes  to  win  back  her  former 
place."  For  forty  years  the  loyalty  and  affection  of  these 
expatriated  people  has  resisted  every  form  of  penalty  and 
bribe.  They  have  waited.  Shall  France,  then,  forget  them? 
Before  the  outbreak  of  the  present  war  had  brought  the  op- 
portunity, the  recovery  of  the  lost  provinces  was  thought  of 
as  a  sacred  duty  for  which  Frenchmen  ought  to  be  prepared 
to  suffer.     Thus  Paul  Sabatier,  writing  in  191 1,  said: 

^  "What  the  French  democracy  desires  ...  is  that  .  .  .  this 
gallant  people,  which  has  given  contemporary  Europe  the  spectacle 
of  an  idealism  that  might  have  been  thought  incredible,  should 
become  at  last  the  arbiter  of  its  own  fate.  .  .  .  For  what  are  we 
making  these  sacrifices?  For  a  very  simple  matter:  to  prevent 
the  proscription  being  established  —  to  be  faithful,  undoubtedly, 
to  Alsace;  but  fundamentally,  what  we  desire  above  all  is  to  be 
faithful  to  an  idea,  to  be  the  knights  of  this  idea,  that  it  may  make 
its  definitive  entry  into  the  world  through  us  and  through  our 
suffering."  ^ 

m.    FACTIONALISM 

That  which  the  French  have  had  most  to  fear  is  internal 
disunion  due  to  their  intensity  of  partisan  convictions.  *'In 
every  Frenchman,"  says  Jean-Chris tophe,  *' there  is  a 
Robespierre.  He  must  be  forever  chopping  the  head  off 
something  or  somebody  to  purify  it."  ^  in  other  words,  the 
Frenchman  takes  his  rational  and  moral  convictions  very 
seriously;  and  as  the  unfortunate  fallibility  of  mortal  mind 
results  in  the  formation  of  a  number  of  such  convictions, 
there  results  a  whole-hearted  and  uncompromising  dissension 
such  as  is  not  paralleled  anywhere  else  in  the  world.  This 
national  trait  is  closely  allied  to  those  that  we  have  already 
considered.  The  Frenchman  thinks  his  premises  through  to 
the  conclusion;  and  when  he  gets  to  the  conclusion  he  holds 
it  to  be  true,  and  honors  it  with  the  respect  which  he  thinks 
the  truth  deserves.  Furthermore,  as  we  have  seen,  when  he 
thinks  about  Hfe  he  conceives  that  the  truth  ought  to  be  put 
into  practice.    So  he  proceeds  to  regulate  his  affairs  by  it, 

*  France  To-day,  pp.  56,  57. 

*  Jean-Christophe  in  PariSy  p.  49. 


FRENCH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


443 


and  so  far  as  possible,  the  affairs  of  the  entire  community. 
He  does  not  propose  to  hide  or  compromise  his  convictions. 
On  the  contrary  he  would  rather  exaggerate  them  than  be 
suspected  of  truckling  to  expediency.  He  is,  as  has  been 
said,  a  ^^boin  frondeur.^^  He  will  even  go  to  the  point  of 
doing  what  is  impolitic,  simply  because  it  is  impolitic.  It 
was  said  at  a  time  when  the  government  was  strongly  anti- 
clerical, that  *' there  are  humble  functionaries  who  make  it 
their  business  to  go  ostentatiously  to  Mass  in  order  to  assert 
their  independence,  though  they  are  not  clericals  at  all." 

From  this  point  of  view  one  can  understand  that  some 
Frenchmen  should  regard  intellectual  or  moral  tolerance  not 
as  a  virtue  but  as  a  weakness. 

"Among  a  people  for  whom  the  demands  of  reason  transcend  all 
others  the  fight  for  reason  dominated  every  other.  ...  If  it  is  the 
fierceness  of  the  fight  that  gives  its  worth  to  life,  and  uplifts  all  the 
living  forces  to  the  point  of  sacrifice  to  a  superior  Being,  then  there 
are  few  struggles  that  do  more  honor  life  than  the  eternal  battle 
waged  in  France  for  or  against  reason.  And  for  those  who  have 
tasted  the  bitter  savor  of  it  the  much-vaunted  apathetic  tolerance 
of  the  Anglo-Saxons  is  dull  and  unmanly.  The  Anglo-Saxons  paid 
for  it  by  finding  elsewhere  an  outlet  for  their  energy.  Their  energy 
is  not  in  their  tolerance,  which  is  only  great  when,  between  factions, 
it  becomes  heroism.  In  Europe  of  to-day  it  is  most  often  indiffer- 
ence, want  of  faith,  want  of  vitality.  The  English,  adapting  a 
saying  of  Voltaire,  are  fain  to  boast  that  'diversity  of  belief  has 
produced  more  tolerance  in  England'  than  the  Revolution  has  done 
in  France.  The  reason  is  that  there  is  more  faith  in  the  France  of 
the  Revolution  than  in  all  the  creeds  of  England."  ^ 

The  most  striking  example  of  French  factionalism  afforded 
by  recent  history  is  the  Dreyfus  affair.  For  all  Frenchmen 
of  the  day  it  was  a  fundamental  issue  of  principle,  permitting 
of  no  compromise  or  leniency  of  judgment.  The  anti- 
Dreyfus  party  believed  that  the  existing  system  of  authority 
should  be  upheld  at  all  costs,  even  at  the  cost  of  an  isolated 
act  of  injustice.  The  Dreyfus  party,  on  the  other  hand,  took 
their  stand  on  the  broader  principle  of  right.     The  former 

1  Rolland,  Jean-Christophe  in  Paris,  pp.  332-333. 


444 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


party  believed  that  the  individual  should  be  sacrificed  to  the 
nation;  the  latter  that  the  nation  should  be  sacrificed  to  the 
ideal  of  justice.     It  was  a  conflict  of  ultimate  standards. 

"Fundamentally/*  Sabatier  tells  us,  "it  was  a  question  of  con- 
science, a  religious  resolution.  Ought  one  to  sacrifice  everything 
in  order  to  tell  the  truth  as  one  sees  it?  Ought  one  to  imperil  the 
nation  itself  for  a  man  who  had  only  a  shred  of  Hfe  left  in  him? 
Those  who  asked  themselves  these  questions  felt  indeed  that  every 
human  power  was  confederated  to  counsel  abstention,  prudence, 
compromise;  but  a  single  voice  that  they  would  fain  have  silenced, 
said:  'You  have  no  right  to  love  your  life,  your  family,  your  land 
more  than  the  truth.  You  have  one  duty  —  to  be  a  mart)rr,  if 
that  is  called  for.*''^ 

Not  only  is  the  bitterness  of  the  conflict  characteristic  of 
France.  It  is  equally  characteristic  of  France  that  the 
Dreyfusards  should  have  won  the  day.  It  is  easy  to  name 
a  place  in  Europe  where  the  temporal  interests  of  the  nation 
would  have  been  held  to  be  of  paramount  importance.  But 
in  this  great  crisis  France  was  true  to  her  traditional  un- 
willingness to  count  the  cost  in  any  baser  coin  when  funda- 
mental moral  issues  were  at  stake.  She  was  prepared  to 
rend  herself  in  pieces  for  a  principle;  not  unaware,  perhaps, 
that  there  is  more  glory  and  greatness  in  such  a  course,  than 
in  a  power  based  on  tyranny  and  secret  injustice.  The  young 
poet  Charles  Peguy,  who  went  to  his  death  in  the  present 
war,  has  eloquently  expressed  the  spirit  that  triumphed  in 
that  earlier  crisis: 

"We  said  that  a  single  injustice,  a  single  crime,  a  single  illegality, 
especially  if  it  be  ofiicially  recorded  and  confirmed:  a  single  injury 
to  humanity,  to  justice  and  righteousness,  especially  if  it  be  uni- 
versally, legally,  nationally,  comfortably  accepted;  —  a  single 
crime  is  enough  to  break  the  whole  social  pact,  the  whole  social 
contract,  a  single  prevarication,  a  single  act  of  dishonor  suffices  to 
ruin  honor,  to  dishonor  a  whole  people.  .  .  .  The  greater  our  past, 
the  greater  precisely  is  our  obligation  to  keep  it  great,  to  keep  it 
pure.  /  render  hack  my  blood  pure  as  I  have  received  it.  ,  .  .  Fimda- 
men tally,  we  were  those  who  stood  for  eternal  salvation,  and  our 

*  Paul  Sabatier,  op.  cit.,  pp.  29,  30. 


FRENCH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


445 


adversaries  for  temporal  salvation.    That  was  the  true,  the  real 
division  in  the  Dreyfus  affair."  ^ 

IV.    SOCIAL  COHESIVENESS 

Each  nation  appears  to  exhibit  in  some  striking  way  the 
possession  of  quite  contradictory  traits.  I  have  suggested 
that  the  key  to  the  understanding  of  the  German  may  lie  in 
the  answer  to  the  question,  ''How  can  he  be  so  subjective,  so 
emotional,  so  sentimental  in  temperament,  and  at  the  same 
time  be  so  relentless  and  unfeeling  in  his  affairs  and  in  his 
public  policy?"  Similarly  we  may  ask  of  the  French,  "How 
can  they  be  at  one  and  the  same  time  so  divided  and  so 
united?  "  We  have  found  two  tendencies  in  French  life  that 
are  centrifugal  and  disorganizing.  In  the  first  place  there  is 
that  humanistic  particularism,  which  leads  to  the  intensive 
and  immoderate  cultivation  of  each  of  the  human  powers  in 
turn.  In  the  second  place  there  is  that  factionalism,  that 
passionate  adherence  to  a  party  cause  or  principle  for  which 
the  Frenchman  is  willing  to  sacrifice  political  solidarity  or 
authority.  Nevertheless  it  is  perfectly  evident  that  no 
modern  nation  possesses  a  greater  love  of  system,  or  a  higher 
degree  of  national  unity. 

To  reconcile  a  love  of  system  with  a  tendency  to  disunion 
is  comparatively  easy.  The  Frenchman  likes  to  think  sys- 
tematically, but  it  is  the  most  human  thing  in  the  world  that 
systems  should  clash;  and  the  more  convinced  each  protag- 
onist is  of  his  awn  system,  the  more  unsystematic  the  several 
systems  will  be  in  their  relation  to  one  another.  In  Germany 
this  dissension  among  systems  has  been  largely  prevented 
by  the  more  powerful  force  of  political  solidarity.  Further- 
more, German  thought  is  more  metaphysical,  French  more 
social;  and  while  metaphysical  differences  are  profound  they 
are  less  likely  to  lead  to  political  disputes.  Indeed,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  Germans  have  deduced  much  the  same  politi- 
cal program  from  metaphysical  premises  so  wide  apart  as 
those  of  Hegel,  Darwin  and  Nietzsche.  It  is  also  to  be  noted 
that  a  love  of  systematic  thinking,  or  even  a  desire  to  live 

/  "Notre  jetinesse,"  in  Cahiers  de  la  quinzaine,  July  17,  1910,  pp.  210-212, 


446 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


consistently  with  one's  ideas  in  no  way  implies  a  readiness  to 
belong  to  a  system,  or  to  submit  to  the  discipline  which  a 
stable  political  system  requires.  Nothing,  indeed,  could  in 
effect  be  more  anarchical  than  a  society  of  social  philosophers, 
each  desiring  to  live  and  to  reform  the  rest  according  to  the 
precepts  of  his  own  system. 

We  are  still  as  far  as  ever,  then,  from  understanding  the 
actual  solidarity  of  the  French  people.  That  the  solidar- 
ity is  there  and  that  it  goes  deep,  no  observer  of  history  or  of 
present  events  will  deny.  No  European  people  has  passed 
through  more  abrupt  changes,  from  social  aristocracy  to 
social  democracy,  from  monarchical  absolutism  to  commu- 
nism and  anarchy,  from  orthodox  Catholicism  to  extremes 
of  atheism  and  blasphemy.  French  history  is  a  prolonged 
series  of  revolutions  and  counter-revolutions.  Nevertheless, 
all  these  violent  changes  have  somehow  been  incidents  in 
one  continuous  life.  Through  it  all  France  has  remained 
France.  France  is  not  merely  the  Republic,  it  is  the  Mon- 
archy and  the  Empire  as  well.  Similarly  in  the  days  before 
the  war  one  might  have  thought  that  there  were  no  French- 
men, but  only  Dreyfusards  and  anti-Dreyfusards,  Mon- 
archists and  Republicans,  clericals  and  anti-clericals.  But 
to-day  the  French  stand  revealed  to  the  world  as  one  and 
indivisible. 

I  think  that  we  can  get  some  light  on  this  paradox  if  we 
note  one  fundamental  fact.  French  unity  is  largely  un- 
conscious, a  matter  of  instinct,  habit,  custom  and  tradition, 
rather  than  of  deliberate  interest  and  methodical  organiza- 
tion. In  the  first  place  France  is  the  oldest  of  the  great 
nations  of  Europe.  The  French  people  are  so  imbued  and 
saturated  with  nationality,  that  it  has  become  a  second 
nature,  a  common  point  of  departure.  The  French  mind 
instead  of  dwelling  on  this  level  of  sameness  occupies  itself 
with  the  more  interesting  novelties  and  differences  that 
spring  from  it.  National  unity  has  been  achieved  long  since 
and  is  now  taken  for  granted.  It  forms  a  sort  of  reserve 
which  is  drawn  upon  in  great  emergencies.  In  Germany,  on 
the  other  hand,  nationality  is  a  more  recent  thing.    The 


FRENCH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


447 


aggressive  and  extravagant  form  which  it  there  assumes  is 
largely  due  to  the  fact  that  only  yesterday  it  was  something 
yet  to  be  fought  for  and  achieved.  To-day  it  is  somewhat 
ostentatious  and  over-emphatic  like  the  wealth  or  social 
station  of  the  parvenu.  Much  of  what  is  unpleasant  in 
modern  Germany  is  the  harshness  of  successful  effort  as 
contrasted  with  the  mellowness  oi  old  and  secure  attain- 
ment. 

A  further  corroboration  of  this  view  is  to  be  found  in  the 
place  which  the  family  occupies  in  French  life.  The  family 
is  a  natural  and  not  an  artificial  unit.  In  that  sense  the 
family  bond  is  a  deeper  bond  than  even  the  marital  bond 
or  the  bond  of  romantic  affection  between  the  sexes. 

"In  France,"  says  Professor  Wendell,  "it  seems  the  most  spon- 
taneous of  all  impulses.  .  .  .  The  ties  it  consecrates  are  evidently 
those  of  nature  as  distinguished  from  those  of  choice.  We  cannot 
help  being  the  children  of  our  parents;  our  children  cannot  help 
springing  from  us.  .  .  On  the  other  hand  some  of  the  closest  actual 
human  relations  in  the  world  are  matters  not  of  necessity  but  of 
choice.  Nobody,  however  devoted,  is  compelled  by  any  inexorable 
law  of  nature  to  be  the  husband  or  the  wife  of  anybody  else.  Com- 
paratively accidental  though  marital  relation  may  be,  the  while, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  conventional  ideals  of  America  have 
always  assumed,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  it  ought  to  be  the 
object  of  prime  human  affection.  Among  the  French,  on  the  other 
hand,  though  conjugal  union  seems  generally  full  of  cordial  feeling, 
the  intensity  of  prime  affection  seems  more  instinctively  conse- 
crated to  the  unavoidable  human  relations  of  parents  and  children."^ 

We  have  a  saying  that  "God  gives  us  our  relatives,  but, 
thank  God,  we  can  choose  our  friends.''  The  French,  on 
the  other  hand,  would  feel  that  what  God  gives  us  should  be 
more  fundamentally  dear  to  us  than  what  we  choose  for 
ourselves.  So  the  foyer  or  hearthstone,  "the  core  of  do- 
mestic life,"  is  in  France  the  great  symbol  of  social  cohesion.^ 

Now  in  a  more  extended  sense  the  French  people  is  a  great 
family  of  families.    To  the  officer  his  soldiers  are  his  children, 

*  Op.  cit.,  pp.  iio-iii. 
'  Cf.  ibid,i  PP«  120  ff. 


448 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  priest  is  the  father  of  his  parishioners.  The  Frenchman 
who  dies  for  his  country  dies  for  his  home,  and  that  his 
children  and  their  children  may  hve  in  a  better  world.  And 
French  quarrels  are  like  family  quarrels,  both  in  their  mo- 
mentary bitterness  and  in  the  certainty  of  eventual  recon- 
cihation  and  of  union  against  a  common  enemy. 

In  spite  of  the  strong  impulse  to  equality  the  Frenchman 
is  comparatively  willing  to  accept  social  differences  where 
they  do  not  imply  differencesof  authorityand  where  they  grow 
naturally  out  of  the  circumstances  of  life.  The  noble  is  a 
noble,  the  merchant  a  member  of  the  bourgeoisie,  and  the 
artist  a  Bohemian,  not  by  any  artificially  imposed  system, 
but  by  birth  or  occupation.  Such  differences  involve  no 
question  of  principle,  and  must  be  acknowledged  as  facts. 
Again,  in  this  case,  it  is  the  natural  social  organism  rather 
than  the  artificial  social  organization  which  is  characteristic- 
ally French.  And  it  is  perhaps  this  same  motive  which  ac- 
counts for  the  fact  that  while  Germany  is  the  home  of  the  idea 
of  the  state-personality,  France  is  the  home  of  the  idea  of  the 
social  mind.  German  unity  is  political  and  authoritative; 
French  unity  is  social  and  instinctive. 

The  French  are  at  one  and  the  same  time  the  most  highly 
civilized,  intellectualized  and  emancipated  of  modern  peoples, 
and  the  most  socialized.  These  two  traits  are  not  wholly 
reconciled.  It  is  the  former  trait  which  is  largely  responsible 
for  their  declining  birth-rate.  They  desire  that  life  should 
be  perfected  in  quality  and  not  merely  multiplied  in  number 
and  in  force.  There  is  a  highly  developed  sense  of  the  re- 
sponsibiUties  which  the  family  entails,  and  a  reluctance  to 
increase  the  family  beyond  the  limits  of  competence.  Here 
again  the  Frenchman  now  feels  the  need  of  facing  the  omi- 
nous facts,  and  of  taking  deliberate  measures  to  safeguard 
the  national  existence.  But  fundamentally,  it  would  appear, 
the  unity  of  French  Ufe  springs  from  instinctive  human 
affections.  It  is  neither  a  partnership  of  utility,  nor  a  union 
for  power;  but  a  sense  of  kinship.  Here  we  reach  the  root 
of  all  French  moral  philosophy.  A  nationality  which  is  so 
rooted  cannot  be  harsh  or  exclusive.     The  family  affections 


FRENCH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


449 


may  breed  a  certain  home-loving  self-sufficiency,  such  as 
deters  the  Frenchman  from  expatriating  himself.  But  just 
as  the  man  who  loves  his  own  children  will  tend  to  love  all 
children,  so  the  man  who  loves  his  family  and  his  kin  will 
easily  recognize  a  wider  kinship  with  the  human  family  of 
all  mankind. 


CHAPTER  XXX 
CHARACTERISTICS  OF  FRENCH   THOUGHT  ^ 

There  was  in  the  last  century,  at  the  time  of  Cousin,  what 
has  sometimes  been  called  an  ^' official' '  French  philosophy, 
and  there  has  always  been  a  French  Catholic  philosophy, 
but  there  has  never  been  a  French  national  philosophy. 
This  is  partly  due  to  the  universality  of  the  French  human- 
istic spirit  and  partly  to  the  fact  that  the  nation  has  never  in 
France  been  regarded  as  a  metaphysical  entity,  as^  it  has  in 
Germany.  The  German  philosophers  may  be  said  in  a  sense 
to  have  invented  the  German  nation.  But  in  France,  as  we 
have  seen,  nationaUty  is  a  matter  of  growth  and  of  feeling 
rather  than  of  doctrine  and  policy.  Hence  in  France  there 
is  no  philosophy  which  is  identified  with  the  national  ideal 
as  the  philosophy  of  Kant,  Fichte  and  Hegel  is  identified 
with  the  national  ideal  of  Germany. 

But  to  an  outsider  who  surveys  French  thought  as  a  whole 
there  seem  to  be  two  broad  conflicting  tendencies,  almost 
equally  persistent  and  perhaps  equally  characteristic.  If  we 
use  the  term  ''intellectual"  in  the  broad  sense  to  include  the 
cognitive  faculties  proper,  and  ''will"  in  an  equally  broad 
sense  to  include  the  active  and  affective  factors  of  the  mind, 
we  may  designate  these  tendencies  as  the  intellectualistic  and 
voluntarisHc. 

I.    THE  INTELLECTUALISTIC  TENDENCY 

I.  Cartesianism.  The  patron-saint  of  French  philosophy 
is  Descartes.  He  is  conceived  to  represent  the  two  things 
on  which  French  philosophy  particularly  prides  itself, 
namely,  clearness  and  the  scientific  spirit.     He  wrote  in  his 

1  For  assistance  in  preparing  this  chapter  I  am  greatly  indebted  to  M. 
Ferdinand  Buisson,  to  Professor  C.  Bougl6  of  the  Sorbonne,  and  to  Professor 
E.  Halfivy  of  the  ifccole  libre  des  Sciences  politiques. 

450 


FRENCH  THOUGHT 


451 


native  tongue  with  beauty  and  lucidity  of  style.  He  was 
the  great  exponent  of  "clear  and  distinct  ideas."  He  pro- 
posed, as  is  well-known,  to  filter  the  muddy  water  of  schol- 
asticism by  criticism  and  by  the  introduction  into  philosophy 
of  the  mathematical  method.  The  truth,  he  said,  must  be 
perfectly  intelligible;  and  either  self-evident  and  axiomatic 
or  else  supported  by  deductive  proof.  And  philosophy  to 
be  true  must  therefore  emulate  the  example  of  exact  science. 
It  must  be  equally  rigorous  and  equally  dispassionate. 

But  while  Descartes  was  a  modern  philosopher,  perhaps 
the  first  of  modern  philosophers,   he  was  nevertheless  a 
Catholic    Christian    and    was    largely    dominated    by    the 
scholastic  tradition.     He  used  the  method  of  mathematics 
but  he  used  it  to  prove  the  Christian  God  and  the  Christian 
soul.     Now  the  subsequent  development  of  Cartesianism 
seems  to  follow  two  divergent  paths.     On  the  one  hand 
there  are  those  who  adhere  to  the  Cartesian  doctrines,  and 
aim  to  establish  a  spiritualistic  metaphysics  by  the  use  of 
reason.     After  Malebranche  this  tendency  finds  no  great 
representatives  among  French  thinkers.     Its  main  current 
flows  elsewhere  through  Leibniz   and    Wolff  to  the  later 
Kantian  movement.     On  the  other  hand  there  are  those  who 
adhere  more  or  less  rigorously  to  the  Cartesian  method,  but 
at  the  expense  of  his  doctrines.     This  is  the  tendency  which 
flourishes  in  France. 

We   thus   discover   at  a   comparatively  early  date   the 
broadest  characteristic  of  French  thought,  its  preference  of 
methodology  to  metaphysics.     I  do  not  for  a  moment  mean 
to  say  that  the  need  of  a  spiritualistic  faith  is  not  felt  in 
France,  but  only  that  the  Frenchman  does  not  hope  to  meet 
this  need  by  the  exercise  of  those  rational  faculties  which  he 
is  so  inclined  to   cultivate.     He  develops  his  spiritualistic 
philosophy,  in  so  far  as  he  develops  it  at  all,  from  the  will 
and  the  feelings;  or  frankly  appeals  to  faith.     This  motive 
of  French  thought  belongs,  in  other  words,  to  the  history  of 
French  voluntarism  and  not  to  the  history  of  French  Carte- 
sianism.    Pascal  at  the  beginning  of  the  Seventeenth  Cen- 
tury already  points  the  way.    Like  Descartes  he  was  a 


452  THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 

mathematician,  and  believed  that  the  only  sure  method  of 
knowledge  was  analysis  more  geometnco .  But  he  thought 
that  for  such  a  method  both  the  human  soul  and  the  mfinite 
reality  beyond  must  remain  insoluble  enigmas.  Therefore 
he  proposed  to  abandon  science  and  to  accept  revelation. 
Now  it  is  a  long  way  from  Pascal  to  Bergson.  But  although 
it  does  not  occur  to  Bergson  to  resort  to  the  authority  of  the 
Church,  he  exhibits  the  same  scepticism  with  regard  to 
reason,  and  feels  the  same  need  of  looking  elsewhere  for 

metaphysical  insight. 

The  Cartesian  inteUectualistic  tendency  in  France,  di- 
vorced from  the  spiritualistic  metaphysics,  has  assumed  a 
variety  of  forms.     It  appeared  first  in  the  development  of 
materiaUsm.     The    mathematical  method  found  its   most 
successful  application  in  mechanical  or  exact  science.     Des- 
cartes himself  was  more  convincing  in  his  physics  than  in  his 
metaphysics;  and  among  his  very  earUest  disciples  there  were 
those  who  proposed  to  substitute  the  former  for  the  latter. 
This   movement   culminated   in   the   French   matenahstic 
school  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  as  represented  by  La 
Mettrie  with  his  *'  Eomme-MacUne;'  and  Holbach  with  his 
Systeme  de  la  Nature,    Synchronously  with  this  development 
of  the  mechanistic  strain  in  Descartes,  and  largely  influenced 
by  Locke  and  Hume,  there  emerged  the  so-called  ^'ideologi- 
cal "  tradition  in  French  thought.     This  movement  reflected 
the  Eighteenth  Century  interest  in  the  origin  of  the  mmd  s 
ideas  but  it  exhibited  at  least  two  characteristics  that  were 
strikingly  French  and  Cartesian.     In  the  first  place  it  was  a 
study  of  method  rather  than  of  reality.     And  in  the  second 
place  it  showed  in  contrast  to  the  more  unsystematic  and 
patient  observation  of  the  English  thinkers,  a  disposition  to 
deduce  all  of  the  mind^s  contents  from  a  single  formula.     Be- 
ginning with  Condillac  this  tendency  had  a  long  history  in 
France     It  grew  more  and  more  barren  until  m  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  with  Cousin,  it  lost  all  originahty  and 
lapsed  into  an  eclectic  and  second-hand  acceptance  of  the 
teachings  of  Kant,  Schelling  and  Hegel. 
For  the  more  powerful  and  original  development  ot  Car- 


FRENCH  THOUGHT 


453 


tesianism  we  must  look  elsewhere.     First  and  foremost  in  its 
influence  upon  the  world's  history  is  the  application  of  the 
logical  method  to  social  and  political  problems.     The  Car- 
tesian method  of  thinking  things  out  de  novo  does  not  reveal 
its  genuinely  revolutionary  tendency  until  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century  it  is  brought  to  bear  upon  human  institutions. 
Descartes  had  proposed  to  leave  these  dangerous  matters  to 
tradition  and  to  authority.     But  it  was  an  impossible  com- 
prornise;  and  a  compromise  with  which  the  French  mind  in 
particular  could  not  rest  content.     Diverted  from  the  field 
of  metaphysics  Cartesianism  attacks  the  foundations  of  the 
state  and  of  human  society.     In  Rousseau's  Contrat  Social 
this  results  in  an  attempt  to  deduce  institutions  directly 
from  first  principles,  in  defiance  of  tradition,  and  even,  it 
must  be  admitted,  in  defiance  of  human  nature.     The  French 
Revolution  represents  the  Frenchman's  intellectual  audacity. 
He  proposes  nothing  less  than  to  reconstruct  human  life  in 
conformity  with  the  dictates  of  logic. 

The  second  of  these  major  developments  of  Cartesianism 
is  the  philosophy  of  Auguste  Comte.     In  this  development 
society  remains  the  principal  subject-matter  of  philosophy, 
but  with  significant  changes.     In  the  first  place  Cartesianism 
has  grown  empirical  and  experimental.     Comte  represents 
the  triumph  of  the  descriptive,  rather  than  the  deductive, 
method  in  science.     Mathematics  remains  with  Comte  the 
fundamental  science;  but  it  is  at  the  same  time  the  most 
abstract  science.     In  the  field  of  more  concrete  phenomena 
it  is  necessary  to  supplement  deduction  by  observation;  in 
other  words,  to  formulate  verifiable  laws.    These  laws  form  a 
hierarchy,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to  understand  the  more 
complex  phenomena  without  an  understanding  of  the  less 
complex.     Human  society  is  the  most  complex  phenomenon 
of  all;  and  its  laws,  therefore,  must  be  superimposed  not  only 
on  those  of  mathematics,  but  on  those  of  physics  and  biology 
as  well.     What  is  needed,  therefore,  as  the  only  sound  basis 
for  social  and  political  reconstruction  is  a  science  of  sociology. 
Thus  does  Comte  seek  to  correct  that  Eighteenth  Century 
abstractionism  which  would  attempt  to  apply  logic  directly 


454 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


to  life.  In  the  second  place,  Comte  recognizes  the  rights  of 
history  and  of  development.  Human  society  is  not  made;  it 
grows.  And  those  who  would  perfect  it  must  respect  the 
laws  of  its  growth.  To  take  society  to  pieces  and  then  put 
it  together  again,  is  equivalent  to  substituting  surgery  for 
education. 

The  history  of  Cartesianism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  is 
thus  marked  by  two  dominant  characteristics.  In  the  first 
place  it  appUes  itself  to  the  study  of  society,  with  the  result 
that  France  becomes  the  home  of  a  new  science,  the  science 
of  sociology.  And,  secondly,  in  this  application  Cartesianism 
finds  itself  making  greater  and  greater  concessions  to  empiri- 
cal facts  and  to  the  lessons  of  history.  Society  is  no  longer 
geometrized.  People  who,  like  the  French,  are  given  to 
carrying  their  social  theories  into  effect  pay  heavily  for  their 
errors.  Hence  the  most  recent  phase  of  the  scientific  phil- 
osophy in  France,  the  sociological  school  of  Tarde  and  of 
Durkheim,  is  marked  by  the  sobriety  and  patience  with 
which  it  studies  the  varied  forms  and  developing  phases  of  the 
social  complex.  But  it  still  remains  true  that  the  French 
mind  loves  the  clear  light  of  reason;  and  that  the  Frenchman 
is  more  disposed  than  most  mankind,  to  look  to  that  light  for 
the  regulation  of  his  affairs. 

II.    THE  VOLUNTARISTIC  TENDENCY 

It  will,  I  think,  be  generally  agreed  that  the  intellectualistic 
tendency,  in  the  broad  sense  in  which  I  have  construed  it,  as 
the  application  of  scientific  method  to  the  conduct  of  Hfe,  is 
the  majority  philosophy  in  France.  Nevertheless  it  is  not 
this  tendency,  but  rather  the  voluntaristic  tendency,  which 
happens  to  be  most  conspicuously  characteristic  of  the 
present  phase  of  French  thought.  This  is  mainly  due  to  the 
genius  of  Bergson  and  to  the  influence  of  this  thinker  in 
England  and  America.  In  France,  while  his  genius  is  recog- 
nized, Bergson  is  the  leader  of  a  minority  whose  importance 
is  largely  due  to  their  representing  a  reaction  against  the 
prevailing  trend  of  opinion. 

Before  emphasizing   the  difference  between   the  volun- 


FRENCH  THOUGHT 


455 


taristic  and  the  intellectualistic  tradition,  I  wish  to  call  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  they  have  at  least  one  point  in  common. 
They  both  satisfy,  although  in  different  ways,  the  French- 
man's demand  for  clearness.  In  a  course  of  lectures  begun 
at  the  Sorbonne  in  1915-1916  and  tragically  interrupted  by 
the  lecturer's  death,  Victor  Delbos  undertook  a  survey  of 
''la  Pensee  Frangaise."  After  having  called  attention  to  the 
fact  that  French  philosophers  have  never  been  nationally 
self-conscious  but  have  sought  to  address  themselves  to  the 
reason  of  mankind,  he  goes  on  to  make  the  usual  reference  to 
the  French  cult  of  clearness.  But  he  denies  that  clearness 
need  be  only  of  the  logical-mathematical  type. 

"Indeed  clearness  can  be  brought  to  bear  on  the  things  of  ob- 
servation, and  on  their  concrete  relations  as  well  as  on  abstract 
concepts  and  their  concatenation;  it  can  be  united  with  a  most 
subtle  perception  of  the  real  as  well  as  to  a  most  finished  system- 
atization  of  ideas;  it  can  mean  nicety  of  vision  as  well  as  rigor 
of  reasoning.  In  other  words,  unless  we  construe  clearness  in  a 
very  special  philosophical  sense,  we  can  say  that  all  our  faculties  of 
cognition  are  more  or  less  capable  of  intuitions  and  clear  notions."  ^ 

Another  contemporary  French  writer  has  on  similar  grounds 
discovered  a  fundamental  agreement  between  Bergson  and 
Descartes: 

"The  difference  between  Descartes  and  M.  Bergson  is  only  that 
M.  Bergson  looks  for  his  intuition  in  expanded  sensation  and  in 
sympathetic  feeling,  whereas  Descartes  looks  for  it  in  mathematics, 
that  m  to  say  J  to  he  preckeyhi  the  mathemcUical  imagination,  ...  A 
time  will  come,  perhaps,  if  Bergsonism  triumphs,  when  to  conceive 
will  signify  to  vibrate  S)mipathetically,  or  to  palpitate  in  one's 
depths.  After  the  triumph  of  Cartesianism,  to  conceive  a  thing 
signified  to  decompose  it  into  imagined  elements,  into  mechanical 
parts,  under  the  pretext  of  comprehending  it  exhaustively."  ^ 

*  This  citation  is  from  Delbos's  introductory  lecture,  reproduced  from  his 
notes  and  published  under  the  title  of  "Caract^res  G6n6raux  de  la  Philosophic 
Frangaise,"  in  Revue  de  MHaphysique  et  de  Morale,  January,  191 7,  pp.  4-5. 

*  Jacques  Maritain:  "L'Esprit  de  la  Philosophie  Modeme,"  Revue  de 
Philosophie,  14  Ann^e,  No.  7  (Juillet,  1914),  pp.  66,  67,  68.  This  writer  pre- 
fers to  either  variety  of  intuitionism,  that  Thomist  use  of  the  "intelligence" 
which  unites  the  sensible  particular  and  the  intellectual  universal. 


456 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


If,  following  this  suggestion,  we  now  generalize  the  French 
cult  of  clearness  we  may  say  that  it  rests  at  bottom  upon  two 
motives:  first,  the  emphasis  on  intuition,  whether  this  be 
intellectual  apprehension,  or  sensuous  perception,  or  that 
immediate  awareness  of  the  inward  experience  of  life  on 
which  the  voluntarists  insist;  second,  the  emphasis  on  expres- 
sion, which  is  equally  represented  by  the  clear  formulations 
of  mathematics,  the  apt  descriptions  and  characterizations 
of  the  French  moraUsts  and  psychologists,  and  by  the  bril- 
liant imagery  of  Bergson.  We  must  then  distinguish  Carte- 
sianism  not  in  terms  of  its  emphasis  on  clearness,  but  in  terms 
of  its  adherence  to  intellectual  and  perceptual  intuition, 
rather  than  to  the  immediate  self-awareness  of  the  will.  Or, 
Cartesianism  is  the  scientific  form  of  the  cult  of  clearness; 
while  voluntarism  is  its  more  spiritual  and  intimately  per- 
sonal form. 

Although  the  prominence  of  the  voluntaristic  strain  in 
French  thought  is  at  this  moment  chiefly  due  to  the  leader- 
ship of  Bergson,  this  strain  is  nearly  as  old  as  the  Cartesian 
strain.  Indeed  it  would  not  be  wholly  mistaken  to  trace  it 
to  Descartes  himself.  For  alongside  of  this  philosopher's 
emphasis  on  the  mathematical  method  of  analysis  and  de- 
duction, there  is  his  Cogito  ergo  sum,  his  acceptance  of  the 
self  as  an  immediate  datum.  But  the  more  important  tenet 
of  voluntarism  is  not  its  acceptance  of  the  immediacy  of  self- 
knowledge,  but  rather  its  substitution  of  the  will  for  the  in- 
tellect. Already  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  Maine  de  Biran 
proposed  to  substitute  volo  for  cogito,  and  to  find  in  the  will 
the  metaphysical  reaUty  which  neither  the  intellect  nor  all 
its  works  can  fathom.  The  same  tendency  appears  in 
Rousseau's  insistence  that  feeling  rather  than  intellect  is  the 
source  of  moral  and  reUgious  insight.  It  appears  in  the  wide- 
spread influence  in  France  of  the  German  romanticist  Schel- 
ling;  and  in  the  ''spiritualistic  dynamism"  of  Ravaisson  in  the 
middle  of  the  last  century.  And  it  has  been  the  chief  philo- 
sophical form  assumed  by  the  so-called  "new  philosophy," 
which  arose  at  the  close  of  the  century  as  a  protest  against 
that  reigning  Cartesianism  which  we  have  already  considered. 


FRENCH  THOUGHT 


457 


Brunetiere  wrote  in  1896  that  for  thirty  or  forty  years 
science  had  pretended  to  succeed  religion,  and  had  claimed 
all  its  honors  and  privileges.  But  now,  he  said,  there  was  a 
reaction,  manifested  in  the  vogue  of  ''spiritism,  occultism, 
magic,  neo-buddhism,  neo-christianism,  ...  an  intimate 
protest  of  the  contemporary  soul  against  the  brutal  dominion 
of  fact."  He  found  further  evidence  of  this  in  the  Wag- 
nerian cult,  in  the  later  as  compared  with  the  earlier  dramas 
of  Dumas  the  younger,  in  the  popularity  of  Puvis  de  Chavan- 
nes,  and  in  the  moral  and  idealistic  motive  in  socialism. 
*'Now  was  the  time,"  he  said  "to  be  idealistic,  and,  in  every 
manner,  in  every  direction,  to  react  against  that  naturalism 
which  we  all  have,  so  to  say,  in  our  blood."  ^ 

Paul  Sabatier,  in  191 1,  voices  a  similar  conviction  that  the 
noon-day  of  naturalism  is  past: 

"Since  the  Eighteenth  Century  and  the  Encyclopaedists,  there 
has  been  no  other  philosophy  which  has  really  penetrated  the 
French  soul;  theirs  still  inspires  all  our  political  and  social  life. 
But  the  thought  of  to-day  is  ever  striving  to  free  itself  from  their 
methods  —  so  seductive  to  the  French  by  reason  of  their  clear  and 
logical  appearance  —  which  are,  however,  too  brief  and  decidedly 
too  simplistic,  too  merely  negative."  ^ 

The  new  idealism,  according  to  this  writer,  is  the  philos- 
ophy of  "Boutroux,  Bergson,  James,  Eucken,  Flournoy, 
Oliver  Lodge,  Poincare,  Le  Roy,  .  .  .  Tyrrell  and  Guyau," 
the  philosophy  which  appeals  "to  life,  to  experience,  to  the 
will,  against  abstract  reason."  In  philosophy  proper,  it  is 
pragmatism,  in  place  of  intellectualism ;  in  the  churches  it  is 
the  "new  apologetic"  based  on  history  and  experience,  in 
place  of  scholasticism  and  papal  infallibility. 

What  this  new  activistic  and  voluntaristic  cult  signifies  I 
have  already  attempted  to  state  more  at  length.  But  I 
wish  especially  to  distinguish  this  new  idealism  from  that 
German  idealism  whose  consequences  we  have  seen  to  be  so 
fateful  for  the  world.  ^    The  basal  difference  lies  in  the  happy 

*  La  Renaissance  de  VId6alisme^  pp.  38,  86,  57. 

^  Op.  cit.,  p.  84. 

'  Cf.  also  above,  p.  235  ff. 


458 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


fact  that  in  French  idealism  there  is  no  Absolute.  German 
idealism  professes  to  be  spiritualistic,  and  it  has  tended  also 
in  a  limited  sense  to  be  voluntaristic.  But  in  the  practical 
and  emotional  aspect  there  is  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
between  will,  in  the  human  and  social  sense,  and  an  Absolute 
Will.  The  Absolute  Will  is  in  fact  a  creation  of  the  intellect, 
and  it  may  be  as  brutally  opposed  to  human  volition  and 
sentiment  as  a  blank  wall  of  matter.  The  Absolute  Will  is 
more  Absolute  than  it  is  will.  It  is  defined  in  order  to  fit  the 
role  of  the  eternal  and  all-comprehensive  Being,  to  which 
man  and  his  merely  human  preferences  are  harshly  subordi- 
nated. When  the  French  idealist,  on  the  other  hand,  speaks 
of  will,  he  means  your  will  and  mine,  with  their  warmth  of 
immediacy,  and  with  the  specific  ideals  which  they  serve. 
Professor  Boutroux  has  expressed  this  difference  as  follows: 

"  France  does  not  start  with  the  idea  of  the  infinite  or  the  abso- 
lute as  the  norm  of  thought  and  the  principle  of  the  organization 
of  the  world.  She  has  simply  before  her  eyes  the  idea  of  humanity, 
and  her  first  task  is  to  conceive,  as  judiciously  and  nobly  as  possible, 
this  idea  which  is  familiar  to  all  men,  and  afterwards  to  realize  it 
ever  more  deeply  in  the  various  departments  of  human  life.  .  .  . 
Minds  fed  on  classic  tradition  .  .  .  rise  from  man  to  that  which 
transcends  man;  they  do  not  speak  of  the  unknown  or  the  unknow- 
able in  order  to  define  and  organize  the  known." 

This  writer  further  indicates  that  in  French  idealism  an 
essential  role  is  assigned  to  feeling,  with  the  result  that  the 
spiritual  reality  is  identified  with  the  personal  life  of  man. 
*^  Feeling,"  he  says,  *^is  the  very  stuff  composing  our  con- 
sciousness which  would  otherwise  lose  itself  in  the  universal 
and  the  impersonal.  .  .  .  Feeling  is  more  than  something 
that  belongs  to  us :  it  is  our  very  self.'*  ^  In  other  words,  while 
the  German  metaphysics  consists  in  converting  a  norm  of 
life  defined  by  the  intellect  into  the  all-real,  this  French 
metaphysics  consists  in  identifying  reality  with  the  actually 
felt  life  that  is  one  with  human  activity  and  aspiration. 

We  have  seen  that  in  order  to  identify  spirit  with  the  all- 

*  Philosophy  and  the  War,  pp.  155,  156,  207,  208. 


FRENCH  THOUGHT 


459 


real,  the  absolutists  have  found  it  necessary  to  construe 
spirit  in  terms  of  nature  and  history.  The  thesis  that  spirit 
is  the  most  objective  and  universal  thing  in  the  world  has 
led  them  to  select  the  most  objective  and  universal  things  of 
experience,  and  then  worship  or  at  least  condone  them  as 
spiritual.  The  most  notorious  instance  of  this  is  the  view 
that  the  most  spiritual  aspect  of  society  is  the  state,  and  that 
the  most  powerful  and  expansive  state  must  be  regarded  as 
the  most  spiritual  aspect  of  history.  But  French  idealism, 
like  all  practical  idealism,  starts  with  human  ideals,  and 
never  abandons  them.  When  the  world  is  affirmed  to  be 
spiritual,  it  is  not  meant  that  this  character  is  to  be  inferred 
from  the  facts  of  nature  and  history.  It  is  not  meant  that 
the  world  can  be  proved  or  known  to  be  spiritual  by  the  in- 
tellect. It  is  meant  that  the  world  can  be  felt  to  be  spiritual 
by  the  inward  sense;  and  that  with  this  feeling  is  inevitably 
associated  a  faith  in  the  eventual  triumph  of  the  spiritual 
ideals.  The  optimism  of  this  philosophy  consists  not  in  the 
proof  that  things  as  they  are  known  to  be  are  good;  but  in  the 
hope  that  what  is  felt  to  he  the  good  life  will  win  reality. 

III.    FRENCH   ETHICS 

It  will  be  convenient  to  consider  French  ethics  as  it  has 
been  influenced  by  the  two  broader  tendencies  which  we  have 
distinguished  above.  The  mainspring  of  French  ethics  is 
not  a  matter  of  theory  at  all.  It  consists  in  the  appeal  to 
man's  instinctive  humanity.  Let  us  consider  this  motive 
as  it  appears  first  in  the  ethics  of  the  Cartesian  tradition,  and 
second  in  the  ethics  of  voluntarism. 

I.  Scientific  Ethics.  We  have  seen  that  the  Cartesian  or 
intellectualistic  tendency  in  France  turned  from  metaphysics 
to  physics,  and  eventually  to  the  study  of  human  society. 
It  becomes  the  chief  object  of  French  ethics  to  understand 
and  to  justify  the  moral  and  political  institutions  in  terms  of 
human  nature.  The  French  feel,  with  nearly  equal  strength, 
the  rights  of  the  individual  human  nature  and  the  need  of 
a  common  social  life.  Their  thought  therefore  avoids  two 
extremes,  the  German  legalism,  which  gives  the  state  or  the 


460 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


abstract  reason  unlimited  coercive  power  over  personal  in- 
clinations; and  the  Englishman's  cult  of^  individual  self- 
sufiEciency,  with  his  reduction  of  the  social  order  to  the 
status  of  a  mere  compromise  or  convenience. 

This  characteristic  of  French  thought  is  apparent  even  in 
what  would  seem  to  be  exceptions.  Voltaire  beUeved  in  the 
finahty  and  infalHbility  of  conscience;  but  he  did  not  argue 
moral  self-sufhciency  from  this  premise,  because  he  found  the 
whole  body  of  common  moral  ideas  to  be  essentially  social  in 
character.  ^' We  have/'  he  said,  ''two  feelings  which  are  the 
basis  of  society:  commiseration  and  justice.''  Helvetius  is 
one  of  the  few  French  thinkers  who  believed  man  to  be  by 
nature  selfish.  But  as  though  to  counteract  the  anti-social 
effect  of  this  teaching  he  insisted  upon  the  limitless  educabil- 
ity  of  man— the  possibiHty,  by  schooling  and  by  legislation, 
of  transforming  man  into  a  social  being.  Rousseau,  owing 
to  a  one-sided  interpretation  of  his  teaching,  is  often  supposed 
to  have  advocated  a  return  to  a  primitive  state  of  individual 
isolation.  But  in  so  far  as  Rousseau  attacked  society,  he 
attacked  what  he  believed  to  be  harsh  and  coercive  in  in- 
stitutional authority.  The  core  of  Rousseau's  philosophy 
was  his  belief  in  the  original  goodness  of  man,  and  hence  his 
perfectibiUty  by  the  release  and  cultivation  of  this  original 
goodness.  Man,  according  to  Rousseau,  is  by  nature  fit  for 
a  harmonious  and  happy  social  life;  that  which  debases  him 
is  not  fellowship  with  his  kind,  but  oppressive  tyranny.  No 
one  has  more  emphatically  proclaimed  that  the  good  life 
must  be  a  Ufe  under  law  and  order,  provided  only  that  these 
shall  be  founded  on  the  general  will  of  mankind,  and  not  on 
exploitation  and  artificial  constraint. 

With  Comte  and  the  sociological  school,  French  ethics  is 
finally  based  on  the  principle  of  sympathy,  or  instinctive 
sociality.  Society  is  a  biological,  psychological  and  pro- 
foundly human  fact.  The  precepts  of  traditional  morality 
are  only  the  outward  and  formal  recognition  of  this  more 
primitive  reality.  And  the  whole  system  of  authority,  in- 
cluding the  state,  gets  its  justification  from  its  expression  of 
the  social  consciousness.    The  fact  of  social  solidarity,  which 


FRENCH  THOUGHT 


461 


Durkheim  and  his  followers  have  emphasized  and  even  ex- 
aggerated, is  represented  not  by  the  state  or  any  form  of 
external  force,  but  by  the  common  conscience. 

2.  Voluntaristic  Ethics.  Rousseau,  as  has  been  suggested, 
plays  a  double  role  in  French  philosophy.  On  the  one  hand 
he  represents  the  premature  attempt  of  the  scientific  method 
to  develop  a  logic  of  social  Ufe.  On  the  other  hand  he  is  the 
first  great  exponent  of  the  philosophy  of  feeling.  And  his 
expression  of  this  motive  at  once  reveals  the  essentially 
humane  character  of  French  voluntaristic  ethics.  The  cult 
of  feehng  is  not  employed  in  French  ethics  to  justify  the 
ruthless  self-reaHzation  of  the  emotional  subject.  For  the 
feeling  which  for  Rousseau  is  the  root  of  the  moral  and 
religious  Ufe  is  not  the  feeling  of  self-importance,  but  the 
feeUng  of  tenderness  and  love.  Similarly,  as  we  have  seen, 
those  French  voluntarists  who,  like  Guyau,  insist  upon  the 
expansiveness  of  Ufe,  do  not  mean  the  expansiveness  of  con- 
quest and  appropriation,  but  the  expansiveness  of  sympathy. 
The  wiU  grows  outward  not  by  assimilating  others  to  itself, 
but  by  assimilating  itself  to  others.  The  same  humanity 
distinguishes,  as  I  have  also  sought  to  show,  the  volun- 
tarism of  Bergson  from  the  voluntarism  of  Nietzsche.  Paul 
Sabatier  provides  us  with  a  clear  statement  of  the  difference. 
Nietzsche  and  Bergson  both  encourage  men  to  believe  in 
themselves,  and  to  identify  reality  with  the  will  that  is  in 
them.  But  ''the  latter,  by  fortifying  his  readers  and  giving 
them  tone,  prepares  them  for  a  Ufe  which  is  association, 
understanding  and  love;  the  former  makes  his  disciples 
powerful  not  because  they  are  strong,  but  because  they  are 
formidable,  which  is  quite  another  matter."  ^ 

IV.  THE  FRENCH  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  STATE 

I.  Fraternity.  It  is  commonly  supposed  that  the  French 
democracy  is  founded  upon  purely  decentraUzing  and  dis- 
integrating motives,  such  as  the  "abstract  rights"  of  the 
individual,  and  the  insistence,  at  any  cost,  on  equal  poUtical 

1  Op.  cit.j  p.  95. 


462 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


power.  It  is  inevitable  that  the  negative  and  destructive 
aspect  of  revolution  should  be  more  conspicuous  than  its 
positive  motive.  But  it  is  important  to  observe  that  a  nega- 
tive attitude  never  begets  a  revolution.  The  negative  people 
are  content  to  let  things  alone.  While  they  may  not  think 
highly  of  the  existing  system,  they  do  not  think  more  highly 
of  any  other  system  that  might  conceivably  be  put  in  its 
place.  The  revolutionists  are  the  ideaUsts  who  hope  ar- 
dently for  something  better. 

I  am  incHned,  therefore,  in  thinking  of  the  French  revolu- 
tion to  put  fraternity  above  liberty  and  equaHty.  The  ideal, 
in  which  the  French  have  had  a  positive,  sometimes  an  ex- 
travagant and  too  confident,  faith,  is  that  of  a  kindly  brother- 
hood of  men.  They  have  believed  in  man.  They  have 
beHeved  that  in  his  reason  each  man  possesses  a  capacity  to 
judge  for  himself ;  and  that  through  their  common  possession 
of  this  supreme  faculty  men  are  equally  entitled  to  political 
sovereignty.  When  confronted  with  the  evident  facts  of 
inequality,  when  reminded  that  some  men  are  more  ignorant 
and  blind  than  their  fellows,  they  have  set  this  down  as  the 
fault  of  institutions,  and  have  sought  to  rectify  it  by  diminish- 
ing repression  and  improving  education.  Even  more  pro- 
foundly they  have  believed  in  man's  natural  fitness  for  a 
cordial  and  united  social  life.  The  goal  of  French  political 
reform  is  not  the  isolation  of  the  individual,  in  order  that  he 
may  live  apart  in  proud  self-sufficiency;  for  the  Frenchman 
feels  his  dependence  on  social  and  poHtical  relations,  not  only 
for  security  and  order,  but  for  all  the  more  positive  good 
things  of  Hfe,  such  as  art  and  the  forms  of  gracious  and 
comely  human  intercourse.  Hence  he  thinks  of  liberty  and 
equaHty  not  as  a  mere  rebellious  or  envious  protest  against 
the  established  system,  but  as  the  means  of  sweetening  and 
invigorating  that  common  life  together,  as  conditions  of  that 
more  positive  and  final  thing  which  they  call  fraternity. 

2.  The  Unity  of  the  Nation.  Some  German  writers  have 
contended  that  the  French  community  possesses  no  soul.  In 
trying  to  be  scientific,  so  it  is  argued,  the  French  have  killed 
the  spirit  of  national  Ufe.    Thus  Professor  Troeltsch  writes: 


FRENCH  THOUGHT 


463 


"The  French  Republic  is  a  democracy  in  the  form  of  its  con- 
stitution and  parliament,  a  democracy  of  high-sounding  phrases, 
but  it  is  not  a  real  democracy  of  feeling,  spirit  and  Kultur.  .  .  .  The 
breach  with  the  national  religion  and  the  national  past,  and  the 
resulting  adoption  of  science  as  the  creator  of  the  new,  progressive 
and  universally  valid  order  of  society,  is  the  most  characteristic 
trait  of  the  French  mind,  which  through  all  these  breaks  with  the 
past,  has  maintained  only  the  artistic  spirit  of  the  Renaissance."  ^ 

But  an  observer  like  Professor  Troeltsch  has  simply  missed 
the  soul  of  France.  He  has  missed  it  because  he  is  accus- 
tomed to  a  kind  of  national  soul  that  manifests  itself  in  ex- 
ternals. Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  German  thought 
than  the  persistent  attempt  to  find  some  absolute  and 
objective  principle  of  national  unity  that  shall  be  quite  inde- 
pendent of  the  willing  consent  of  individuals.  He  has  at- 
tempted to  identify  nationality  with  race,  despite  the  plain 
teachings  of  history  and  ethnology.  He  has  tried  to  identify 
nationality  with  language;  and  finding,  curiously  enough,  that 
the  German  language  contains  foreign  words,  he  has  under- 
taken to  penalize  their  use.  But  he  adopted  as  the  designa- 
tion of  the  boxes  in  which  such  fines  were  to  be  collected,  the 
word  ^'Fremdenworterstrafkasse,''  which  is  Germanic  enough 
in  its  general  effect,  but  unfortunately  old  French  in  its  last 
two  syllables!  ^  The  same  motive  has  prompted  the  German 
to  identify  the  soul  of  the  nation  with  the  state,  or  the  will 
of  the  ruling  authorities.  This  identification  has,  as  we  have 
seen,  been  widely  accepted  with  the  result  that  the  national 
soul  becomes  something  coercive  upon  the  will  and  judgment 
of  the  people.  With  the  French,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
personality  of  the  nation  springs  from  popular  unanimity. 
It  is,  as  we  have  seen,  largely  unconscious,  except  in  the  stress 
of  great  emergencies.  It  is  the  instinctive  family  feeling, 
which  lives  on  through  sharp  differences  of  opinion  and 
violent  changes  of  authority.  It  is  not  something  defined 
and  imposed,  but  something  that  springs  from  a  *^will  to  live 
together  and  form  a  political  community."  ^ 

*  "The  Spirit  of  German  Kultur,"  in  Modern  Germany ^  p.  64. 

*  Cf.  Boutroux,  Philosophy  and  the  War^  p.  172. 
'  Boutroux,  op,  cit.,  p.  162. 


464 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


FRENCH  THOUGHT 


465 


Compare,  for  example,  the  views  of  the  Germans  and  of 
the  French  regarding  Alsace-Lorraine.  As  long  ago  as 
August,  1870,  even  before  Sedan,  Treitschke  wrote: 

"These  provinces  are  ours  by  the  right  of  the  sword;  and  we 
will  rule  them  in  virtue  of  a  higher  right;  in  virtue  of  the  right  of 
the  German  nation  to  prevent  the  permanent  estrangement  of  her 
lost  children  from  the  Germanic  Empire.  We  Germans,  who 
know  both  Germany  and  France,  know  better  what  is  for  the  good 
of  the  Alsatians  than  do  those  unhappy  people  themselves,  who  in 
the  perverse  conditions  of  a  French  existence,  have  been  denied  any 
true  knowledge  of  modem  Germany,  (They  have  since  learned 
much!)  We  desire,  even  against  their  will,  to  restore  them  to 
themselves." 

To  this  Treitschke  added:  ^^  We  are  by  no  means  rich  enough 
to  renounce  so  precious  a  possession'' ;  and  Bismarck  (after 
a  word  about  the  vaporizings  of  the  professors)  went  him 
one  better  and  said:  ^'It  is  the  fortresses  of  Metz  and  Strass- 
burg  which  we  want,  and  which  we  will  take."  ^  Or  consider 
the  profounder  argument  that  since  loyalty  is  a  German 
trait,  the  very  loyalty  of  the  Alsatians  to  France  proves  that 
they  are  Germans! 

With  such  arguments  as  these  we  have  to  compare  the 
utterances  we  have  cited  above,  in  which  the  French  case  is 
rested  entirely  upon  the  loyalty  and  affections  of  the  Alsatian 
people.  A  forced  or  oppressive  nationality  would,  in  the 
French  view,  be  a  contradiction  in  terms.  If  the  nation  is 
not  loved  by  its  people,  it  is  no  nation  at  all.  The  French- 
man speaks  of  *'la  douce  France."  But  even  the  most  loyal 
Pangermanist  would  scarcely  refer  to  "sweet  Prussia." 
French  patriotism  has  in  it  an  element  of  tenderness,  spring- 
ing naturally  from  old  associations,  from  common  sacrifices 
and  from  their  love  of  mutual  intercourse.  For  the  French- 
man, such  as  Professor  Boutroux,  "a  nation  is,  above  all,  a 
group  of  men  united  by  the  desire  to  live  together,  by  a  sense 

^  From  H.  W.  C.  Davis,  The  Political  Thought  of  Treitschke,  p.  112,  and 
from  Busch,  Bismarck  in  the  Franco-Prussian  War;  quoted  by  J.  Holland  Rose, 
Nationality  in  Modern  History,  pp.  131,  132.  Busch  points  out  that  the  an- 
nexation was  deprecated  by  the  progressive  elements  in  Germany.    (I,  147.) 


of  solidarity,  by  community  of  joys  and  sorrows,  by  memories, 
aspirations  and  destinies.     A  nation  is  a  friendship. ^^  ^ 

3.  The  Nation  and  Humanity.  Finally,  we  have  to  ob- 
serve that  the  French  idea  of  the  nation  readily  passes  over 
into  the  broader  ideas  of  internationality  and  humanity. 
In  so  far  as  nations  are  persons,  then  the  ideas  of  liberty, 
equality  and  fraternity  are  transferred  to  the  relations  of  na- 
tions. A  nation,  like  a  person,  must  be  free  from  oppression. 
Nations,  like  persons,  are  morally  equal,  whatever  their  size 
and  station  in  the  world.  Nations,  like  persons,  must  aim 
to  live  in  fraternal  relations  of  sympathy  and  mutual  respect. 
And  finally,  nations,  like  persons,  are  perfectible  by  education, 
and  naturally  fitted  for  a  gracious  and  ennobling  intercourse. 

If  we  pass  from  the  French  conception  of  the  nation  to  the 
more  fundamental  national  traits  and  traditions,  we  find  the 
deeper  reasons  for  French  internationalism.  A  humanistic 
civilization  is  invariably  cosmopolitan.  Science  is  cosmo- 
politan; and  the  science  of  social  life  to  which  the  French 
intellectualists  have  so  assiduously  devoted  themselves, 
refers  not  to  the  exclusive  life  of  the  nation  but  to  the  ideal 
life  of  any  human  society.  Finally,  the  tap-root  of  French 
ethics  is  to  be  found  in  the  social  instincts,  in  sympathy  and 
human  affection.  But  these  are  instincts  that  inevitably 
pass  beyond  the  bounds  of  nationaUty.  This  is  not  a  ques- 
tion of  theory,  but  of  historical  fact.  The  French  have  less 
race  prejudice  than  any  other  highly  civilized  nation.  In 
their  contact  with  inferior  native  peoples,  as  in  the  old  days 
of  the  French  and  Indian  wars  in  America,  they  have  freely 
mingled  and  amalgamated.  One  may  approve  this  or  dis- 
approve it.  I  cite  it  here  only  to  show  that  the  Frenchman 
does  not  reserve  his  humanity  for  his  own  national  kind. 
It  is  not  a  clannish  and  exclusive  feeling,  but  a  genuinely 
humane  feeling.  And  this  is  the  feeling  which  moves  France 
at  this  time  to  align  herself  with  those  who  will  not  rest  con- 
tent until  all  of  the  human  family  have  been  brought  into 
one  community,  within  which  it  will  be  no  longer  necessary 
to  hate  or  fear  those  whom  nature  intended  to  be  one's 
brothers. 

*  Op.  cit.,  p.  210. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 
ENGLISH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 

I.    SAGACITY 

I  have  chosen  the  term  "sagacity''  to  characterize  the 
mind  of  the  Englishman,  because  sagacity  suggests  a  mind 
that  pulls  well  in  harness  —  a  workmanlike  mind  rather  than 
a  detached  or  soaring  mind.  The  Englishman  excels  in 
what  is  sometimes  called  "practical  logic."  ^  He  is  sus- 
picious of  sweeping  generalizations,  and  has  little  aptitude 
for  making  them.  When  he  has  felt  the  need  of  metaphysics, 
he  has  imported  it  from  Germany;  and  having  imported  it 
he  has  ordinarily  clarified  it  and  compromised  it  by  an  ad- 
mixture of  more  or  less  irrelevant  common-sense.  English 
thought  is  equally  lacking  in  the  power  of  moral  generaliza- 
tion. He  leaves  it  to  the  Frenchman  to  seize  and  fix  in  im- 
perishable form  the  universal  truths  of  life.  His  own  thought 
is  anchored  and  limited  by  a  set  of  homely  beliefs  and  practi- 
cal interests  that  he  never  questions. 

The  same  idea  may  be  expressed  by  saying  that  the  English 
mind  is  intelligent  rather  than  intellectual.  The  French  are 
intellectual  in  the  sense  that  the  intellect  is  emancipated  and 
left  free  to  run  its  own  course.  French  intellectualism  is 
prone  to  extravagance,  irresponsibility  and  virtuosity.  By 
intelligence  we  mean  the  intellect  acting  in  an  auxiliary 
capacity,  applied  to  some  task  which  it  does  not  itself  select, 
and  therefore  getting  its  standards  of  success  and  failure 
from  beyond  itself.  Intelligence  is  intellect  under  control. 
Even  the  EngUsh  philosophers,  instead  of  being  seers  or 
professors,  have  almost  invariably  been  men  of  affairs,  who 
are  accustomed  to  thinking  within  limits  prescribed  by  a 
vocation,  such  as  politics. 

*  Cf.  Bosanquet's  Social  and  International  Ideals,  p.  i8. 

466 


ENGLISH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


467 


The  Englishman  is  perfectly  willing  to  live  without  waiting 
to  complete  his  philosophy  of  life.  The  British  Empire,  as 
we  have  already  noted,  is  not  the  execution  of  a  preconceived 
idea,  but  the  unforeseen  result  of  a  thousand  practical  de- 
cisions, each  determined  by  the  precedents  and  results  of 
previous  decisions,  and  by  the  pressure  of  present  circum- 
stances. It  is  a  commonplace  that  in  England  institutions 
grow,  and  are  not  erected  from  the  plans  of  a  philosophical 
architect.  It  is  significant  that  the  greatest  influence  of 
English  thought  should  have  been  in  the  field  of  politics. 
But  even  Locke  is  not  like  Rousseau,  Fichte  and  Hegel,  an 
innovating  theorist,  so  much  as  a  man  of  political  experience 
and  sense  who  reflected  the  spirit  of  a  political  reform  already 
achieved.  And  if  England  has  led  the  way  in  recent  politi- 
cal evolution  it  has  been  by  force  of  example  rather  than  by 
force  of  logic.  English  statesmen  have  commonly  acknowl- 
edged the  precepts  of  conventional  morality;  but  they  have 
not  felt  the  need  of  a  rational  and  consistent  policy,  nor  of 
a  definite  ideal  of  national  destiny.  Their  Parliamentary 
standards  have  favored  neither  metaphysics  nor  perfervid 
eloquence,  but  rather  a  mastery  of  facts  and  figures,  and  a 
power  of  lucid  presentation.  They  have  regarded  the  politi- 
cal problem  as  essentially  a  problem  of  compromise.  They 
have  directed  their  attention  to  the  next  thing  to  be  done, 
and  have  been  satisfied  to  find  a  way  out  of  a  present  predica- 
ment. English  policy  has  suffered  from  short-sightedness; 
but  it  has  gained  by  its  sober  recognition  of  existing  facts,  and 
its  prudent  regard  for  existing  interests.  And  it  has  been 
saved  from  the  fickleness  of  opportunism,  by  a  characteristic 
patience  and  tenacity.  The  difference  between  the  political 
temper  of  the  English  and  that  of  the  Germans  has  been 
well-expressed  by  a  contemporary  French  writer. 

"In  order  to  understand  the  German  meaning  of  the  war,  books 
alone  are  almost  sufficient.  Everything  was  worked  out,  every- 
thing was  written  down  beforehand:  Treitschke,  Bemhardi,  von 
der  Goltz,  the  publications  of  the  Pan-Germans,  the  manual  of  the 
customs  of  war;  state  the  reasons,  the  object,  the  methods.  The 
whole  idea  is  there,  defined  in  every  detail,  from  the  enthusiastic 


4 


468 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


memories  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  down  to  the  scheme  of  a 
future  European  Federation  under  the  hegemony  of  Germany, 
from  the  argument  of  the  superiority  of  race  and  its  mystic  influence 
down  to  the  plan  of  attack  with  its  flanking  movement  through 
western  Flanders,  and  its  pivot  in  Lorraine,  from  the  thesis  which 
declares  morality  and  treaties  subordinate  to  the  absolute  power 
of  the  State,  to  that  which  makes  ^f rightfulness'  a  legitimate 
military  principle.  .  .  .  No  intellectual  process  could  be  more  totally 
opposed  to  this  than  the  one  which  is  natural  to  Germany's  English 
cousins.  In  England  thought  works  on  empirical  and  inductive 
lines:  reality  engenders  and  controls  the  ideal.  .  .  .  Thought 
repeats  reahty  bit  by  bit,  with  every  feature  of  its  visible  and  Uving 
nature,  and  with  all  its  contingent  and  complex  diversity.  And 
similarly  the  English  will  is,  above  all,  a  power  of  adaptation  to 
this  reality:  an  adaptation  which  takes  place  only  by  degrees, 
which  is  modest  because  patient,  often  discontinuous,  corrected 
gradually  under  the  continual  teaching  of  circumstances,  and  which 
is  persistently  pursued  through  all  obstacles  and  in  spite  of  all 
disappointments.  This  is  the  history  of  England's  present  effort, 
and  it  is  the  whole  history  of  this  nation,  of  its  growth,  of  its 
extension  over  the  planet,  of  its  successes,  of  its  miraculous  Empire, 
which  the  Germans  affect  to  despise  as  incoherent,  decaying, 
incapable  of  survival,  because  so  great  a  success  has  sprung  from 
a  principle  which  is  the  very  opposite  of  their  own,  not  from  a 
central  and  creative  a  priori  idea,  but,  according  to  them,  from 
accident,  from  luck."  ^ 

Just  as  the  Englishman  feels  no  need  of  a  coherent  and  com- 
pletely reasoned  political  policy,  so  in  his  individual  life  he 
feels  no  need  of  an  ultimate  purpose.  He  can  go  on  devoting 
himself  to  civilization,  as  Huxley  did,  even  though  he  does 
not  believe  in  the  ultimate  cosmic  security  of  civilization. 
He  can  live  by  his  code  of  personal  honor,  without  requiring 
that  the  ultimate  forces  of  history  or  reality  shall  be  on  his 
side.  Ian  Hay,  having  in  mind  the  efficiency  of  the  Indian 
Civil  Service,  tells  us  that  "the  British  supreme  talent"  is 
*Hhe  talent  for  efficient  departmental  work  done  in  a  subor- 
dinate position."  2  In  other  words  it  is  characteristic  of  the 
Englishman  to  do  a  given  job  well,  without  troubling  him- 

,    *  Chevrillon:  England  and  the  War,  pp.  9-1 1. 
*   *  The  Oppressed  English,  p.  34. 


ENGLISH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


469 


self  much  about  ulterior  questions.  Just  as  he  does  not  press 
considerations  of  rational  consistency,  so  he  does  not  pride 
himself  on  intellectual  attainment.  There  is  no  such  cult 
of  the  intellect  as  there  is  among  the  French;  and  no  such 
stimulating,  critical  and  rewarding  intellectual  public  as  the 
Frenchman  finds  in  Paris.  The  Englishman  is  not  ashamed 
of  ignorance;  and  counts  health,  sport  and  gentility  as 
compensating  values. 

When  one  turns  to  art  and  letters  one  cannot  apply  the 
term  "sagacity"  with  the  same  assurance.  England  has 
probably  produced  more  great  poets  than  any  other  modern 
nation.  There  is  no  theory  or  formula,  so  far  as  I  know,  that 
accounts  for  genius,  or  that  accounts  for  those  splendid  con- 
stellations of  genius  that  from  time  to  time  appear,  as  in  the 
Athens  of  ancient  times,  the  Italy  of  the  Renaissance  and  in 
Elizabethan  England.  But  admitting  the  irreducibility  of 
individual  genius,  and  the  sensitiveness  of  art  to  cosmopoli- 
tan influence,  there  does,  even  here,  appear  to  be  a  general 
characteristic;  a  characteristic  which  makes  Coleridge,  for 
example,  an  almost  unique  figure  in  English  letters.  English 
poetry  is  as  a  rule  neither  fanciful,  nor  metaphysical,  nor 
mystical.  Nor  does  it  deal,  as  does  much  French  poetry, 
with  the  sophisticated  world  of  social  forms  and  manners. 
It  is  the  poetry  of  the  relatively  simple  things,  of  nature,  of 
moods  and  of  action.  And  its  style  is  suitable  to  its  subject- 
matter,  plain-spoken,  apt,  often  pungent  and  gritty;  almost 
never  opulent,  elaborate,  or  darkly  hinting  what  it  does  not 
say.  In  short,  it  is  characteristic  of  English  art  to  refine  and 
beautify  the  things  of  daily  life,  rather  than  to  create  a  world 
and  a  mode  of  its  own. 

English  science  owes  its  greatness  to  the  fact  that  it  was 
free  from  metaphysical  bias  or  speculativeness  from  a  rel- 
atively early  date.  And  in  proportion  as  science  has  been 
identified  with  the  experimental  method,  it  has  offered  an 
opportunity  peculiarly  suitable  to  the  genius  of  the  English 
mind.  For  in  science,  no  less  than  in  politics,  it  is  intelli- 
gence rather  than  intellect  that  is  demanded.  As  the  states- 
man adapts  his  policies  to  conditions,  so  the  scientist  adapts 


470 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


his  theory  to  facts.  Both  must  combine  powers  of  invention 
and  straight  thinking  with  a  sense  for  what  is  relevant,  a 
respect  for  the  particular  and  the  existent,  and  the  patience 
to  wait  for  the  verdict  of  experience.  The  genius  of  Newton 
and  of  Darwin  lay  in  their  consummate  faculty  for  verifying 
hypotheses,  for  converting  old  conjectures  and  fragmentary 
formulas  into  the  form  of  tested  and  authentic  scientific 

truth. 

But  British  sagacity  is  commonly  thought  of  in  less  flat- 
tering terms,  as  utilitarianism  and  the  love  of  wealth.  Thus 
Emerson  says  that  "the  voice  of  their  modern  muse  has  a 
slight  hint  of  the  steam-whistle.''  These  words  were  written, 
and  this  type  of  judgment  was  largely  formed,  in  the  middle 
of  the  last  century,  when  the  rest  of  the  world  had  not  yet 
overtaken  England's  lead  in  the  new  industrialism,  and 
when  Germany  was  still  the  seat  of  Emersonian  romanticism. 
Nevertheless  the  judgment  is  in  substance  correct.  The 
EngHshman  does  not  try  any  harder  to  get  wealth  than  those 
who  profess  to  despise  it;  but  he  does,  it  is  true,  quite  candidly 
value  it.  He  sees  the  perfectly  soHd  and  indubitable  im- 
portance of  it.  How  comes  it,  then,  that  the  Englishman,  in 
turn,  accuses  the  American  of  a  sordid  commercialism?  ^  The 
difference,  I  think,  is  this.  Americans  value  the  getting  of 
money ;  EngUshmen  the  having  of  it.  America  has  magnified 
the  activities  of  livelihood,  the  vocation  of  business;  and  has 
given  to  unsympathetic  critics  the  impression  of  condoning 
or  even  of  exalting  certain  traits  of  craft  or  avarice  by  which 
men  may  rise  from  penury  to  opulence.  The  Englishman 
in  his  matter  of  fact  way  sees  that  it  is  a  good  thing  to  have 
wealth  and  good  credit.  But  he  does  not  think  money  to  be 
worth  any  more  for  having  been  earned.  He  is  perfectly 
wiUing  to  marry  it,  or  inherit  it,  or  have  it  given  to  him.  Its 
value  Hes  not  in  the  getting  of  it,  but  in  what  you  can  do 
with  it.  The  things  he  loves  best,  such  as  landed  estates, 
sports,   travel  and   above  all  personal  independence,   are 

founded  on  it. 

As  to  utihtarianism,  if  I  were  an  Englishman,  I  should 
simply  plead  guilty.    Utilitarianism  is  not  quixotic  and  it  is 


ENGLISH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


471 


not  heroic.  But  it  is  wholesome  and  provident.  If  it  does 
not  excite  admiration,  like  the  chivalry  and  enthusiasm  of 
the  French,  at  any  rate  it  need  not  excite  fear  Uke  the  Ger- 
man cult  of  power.  For  utihtarianism  means  only  that  the 
good  shall  be  measured  in  terms  of  the  interests  and  desires 
of  men.  It  takes  these  as  it  finds  them  and  seeks  a  poUcy 
by  which  they  may  be  satisfied.  If  this  is  not  the  end  of 
morality,  it  is  at  least  the  beginning.  If  there  is  anything 
better  than  prudence,  as  I  think  there  is,  then  it  must  be  at 
least  as  good  as  prudence;  and  must  not  ignore  and  override 
it  in  behalf  of  a  vague  sentiment  or  tyrannical  formula. 

II.    SELF-RELIANCE 

As  long  ago  as  the  Fourteenth  Century  Froissart  spoke  of 
"the  great  haughtiness  of  the  English  who  are  affable  to  no 
other  nation  than  their  own,"  and  dubbed  the  English  "the 
worst  people  in  the  world,  the  most  obstinate  and  pre- 
sumptuous." ^  In  the  centuries  that  have  followed  they 
cannot  be  said  to  have  lived  this  reputation  down.  The 
Englishman  is  still  proverbially  the  man  who  has  superb 
and  somewhat  disagreeable  confidence  in  his  own  latent 
powers.  If  you  are  an  outsider  he  does  not  flatter  you  by 
admitting  that  you  are  at  all  essential  either  to  his  security 
or  to  his  happiness. 

In  discussing  the  several  forms  of  the  modern  conscience, 
we  have  already  distinguished,  as  peculiarly  characteristic 
of  England,  the  idea  of  individual  moral  self-sufficiency. 
That  liberty  of  conscience  which  the  Englishman  demands, 
is  the  privilege  of  making  up  his  mind  for  himself  .^  He  forti- 
fies himself  within  his  own  "unconquerable  soul,"  and  is  a 
stickler  for  his  own  individual  prerogatives.  This  is  the 
result  not  of  any  theory  of  human  equality  but  of  his  habitual 
self-reliance.  The  Englishman  is  prejudiced  in  favor  of 
taking  care  of  himself,  and  would  rather  be  his  own  master 
in  hardship  and  danger  than  to  receive  ease  and  security 
from  the  indulgence  of  another. 

*  Quoted  by  Sir  James  Fitzjames  Stephen,  Horae  Sabbaticae,  Vol.  I,  p.  49  ff. 
^  Cf.  above,  Chap.  XIII,  H,  2. 


172 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


This  trait  has  manifested  itself  in  England's  reluctance 
until  recently  to  ally  herself  with  other  European  nations. 
She  has  preferred  to  keep  her  hands  free,  and  to  intervene 
from  time  to  time  in  continental  affairs,  as  her  interest  or 
opportunity  seemed  to  require.  Her  distrust  of  others  is  the 
complementary  negative  aspect  of  her  confidence  in  herself. 
She  has  been  disinclined  to  depend  on  others.  But  she  has 
not  lived  in  fear.  On  the  contrary,  present  events  would 
seem  to  indicate  that  she  has  been  led  both  by  her  oppor- 
tunism and  her  sense  of  inherent  and  indomitable  strength 
to  omit  necessary  precautions.  Her  confidence  in  her  power 
to  do  at  the  time  whatever  the  occasion  may  require,  has 
enabled  a  more  calculating  and  painstaking  enemy  to 
threaten  her  very  national  existence. 

The  deeper  cause  of  this  English  self-reliance  is  doubtless 
to  be  found  in  the  geographical  circumstance  of  insularity. 
But  that  in  itself  cannot  directly  account  for  the  fact  that 
this  self-reliance  appears  not  only  in  the  relation  of  England 
to  other  nations,  but  also  in  the  relations  of  one  Englishman 
to  another.  It  is  not  merely  that  the  English  nation  lives 
on  an  island,  but  that  in  a  sense  each  individual  Englishman 
lives  on  an  island.  His  life  tends  to  be  a  thing  apart,  and  to 
possess  a  certain  roundness  and  completeness  by  itself.  An 
individual  Englishman  is  not  a  member  or  fragment  which 
requires  to  be  supported  by  something;  he  can  stand  alone 
on  his  own  feet. 

M.  Chevrillon  has  drawn  a  very  illuminating  antithesis 
between  England  and  France,  showing  that  despite  the  in- 
dustrial basis  of  her  economic  Hfe,  England's  social  ideal  is 
still  the  country  gentleman: 

"It  is  one  of  the  curious  features  of  this  strange  country,  that 
the  moral  principle  of  civilization  and  society  is,  to  so  great  an 
extent,  essentially  aristocratic  and  rural,  even  though  its  activities 
are  chiefly  industrial  and  commercial,  even  though  the  immense 
majority  of  its  people  are  crowded  into  huge  brick  cities  under  an 
everlasting  pall  of  factory  smoke  —  even  though,  politically,  it  is 
more  and  more  tending  toward  social  democracy.  ...  In  our 
country  the  factors  are  reversed.    France,  in  spite  of  the  great 


ENGLISH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


473 


development  of  her  manufactures,  still  remains  a  community  where 
life  and  activities  are  in  the  main  rural.  And  yet  the  forms  of 
civilization  and  of  intellect,  the  conceptions  of  the  ideal,  have  been, 
in  France,  for  the  last  three  centuries,  of  urban  type  and  origin,  the 
country  being  but  a  holiday  place  and  the  home  of  peasants.  .  .  . 
From  the  Eighteenth  Century  onward,  the  town  has  been  the 
magnet  in  France,  and  the  manor  house  in  England;  this  is  made 
clear  by  the  paintings  of  the  period.  Nearly  all  English  portraits 
are  of  squires  and  their  families;  untroubled  faces  used  to  the  open 
air,  with  the  usual  background  of  leafy  park.  The  French  por- 
traits, on  the  contrary  —  witty  features,  sparkling  eyes,  waggish 
lips  in  a  setting  of  panelling  and  curtains  —  reveal  the  refinements, 
the  pleasures  and  vivacity  of  drawing-room  life.  The  same  differ- 
ence is  apparent  between  the  types  of  our  higher  bourgeoisie  and 
that  of  the  English  gentry  (who  can  show  enthusiasm  for  golf) ;  and 
the  contrast  of  the  two  principles  is  still  more  striking  if,  for  in- 
stance, our  lycees  be  compared  with  the  public  schools  of  Eng- 
land. .  .  .  Such  schools  are  nearly  always  in  the  country,  surrounded 
by  fields  and  lawns;  and  the  life  the  boys  lead  there,  as  later  on  at 
the  old  universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  resembles  in  its 
games,  its  setting  and  manners,  that  of  the  manor  house."  ^ 

Thus  the  Englishman's  insular  character  is  further  en- 
hanced by  the  rural  pattern  of  his  social  life.  The  typical 
Englishman  is  relatively  free  from  contact  and  from  pressure. 
He  takes  part  in  the  world's  affairs  as  a  free  agent,  seeing  it 
from  afar,  and  picking  his  opening.  This  has  not  made  him 
irresponsible,  or  frivolous  and  pleasure-loving;  he  dislikes 
idleness,  and  is  prompted  to  assume  responsibihties  even 
when  they  are  not  thrust  upon  him.  But  it  is  the  chief 
cause  of  his  independence,  his  ''character"  and  his  individu- 
alism. And  the  peculiarly  English  form  of  education  is 
devoted  to  the  cultivation  of  this  type  —  to  the  making  of 
English  individuals  of  this  species,  rather  than  to  the  manu- 
facture of  cogs  in  a  social  mechanism. 

III.    RESERVE 

The  Englishman  does  not  offer  or  invite  confidence.  Like 
his  kindred  in  New  England  his  is  a  freezing  and  blighting 

1  England  and  the  Waft  pp.  71-73. 


i 


474 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF   IDEALS 


presence   to  that  American  of  the  Middle  West  who  un- 
bosoms himself  to  every  stranger.     I  have  in  mind  a  casual 
acquaintance  in  a  Pullman  car,  who  told  me  that  Omaha, 
Nebraska,  was  the  finest  town  in  the  world,  and  Hartford, 
Connecticut,  the   worst.     In  the  latter   city,  he  said,  if  a 
man  should  slap  you  on  the  back  or  call  you  by  your  first 
name  within  the  first  year  of  your  acquaintance,  you  would 
drop  dead.     The  man  who  told  me  this  was  evidently  quite 
ready  to  slap  anybody  on  the  back  at  a  moment's  notice! 
The  Englishman  is  lacking  in  promiscuous  social  experience. 
Even  the  most  intellectual  Englishman  is  shy  and  awkward 
in  an  unfamiliar  presence.     And  he  has  the  taciturnity  of 
the  Northerner,  in  contrast  to  the  volubiHty  and  expressive- 
ness of  the  Latin.     He  does  not  tell  you  what  is  in  his  heart, 
and  he  evinces  no  strong  interest  in  what  may  be  in  yours. 
Emerson  writes  of  the  English,  that  "  they  have  no  curiosity 
about  foreigners,  and  answer  any  information  you  may  volun- 
teer with  ^  Oh,  Oh! '  until  the  informant  makes  up  his  mind 
that  they  shall  die  in  their  ignorance,  for  any  help  he  will 
offer."  1 

This  same  observer  has  called  attention  to  the  unwilling- 
ness of  the  English  to  profess  the  motives  that  actuate  them: 

"They  hide  virtues  under  vices,  or  the  semblance  of  them.  It 
is  the  misshapen  hairy  Scandinavian  troll  again,  who  lifts  the  cart 
out  of  the  mire,  or  'threshes  the  com  that  ten  day-laborers  could 
not  end,'  but  it  is  done  in  the  dark  and  with  muttered  maledictions. 
He  is  a  churl  with  a  soft  place  in  his  heart,  whose  speech  is  a  brash 
of  bitter  waters,  but  who  loves  to  help  you  at  a  pinch.  He  says 
no,  and  serves  you,  and  your  thanks  disgust  him."  2 

According  to  Ian  Hay  the  two  things  that  the  Englishman 
most  abhors  are  ^^side"  and  "shop.''  He  does  not  tell  you 
his  principles  or  his  ruling  purpose.  He  lives  by  the  maxim, 
"Thou  shalt  not  speak  aught  but  flippantly  of  matters  that 
concern  thee  deeply."  ^  Early  in  the  war  Earl  Grey  felt 
compelled  to  profess  the  creed  of  the  Liberal  Party  in  matters 

*  English  Traits,  p.  145. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  131. 

'  Op.  cit.,  pp.  17,  21. 


ENGLISH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


475 


of  foreign  policy.  But  many  EngHshmen,  even  those  whose 
creed  was  more  benevolent  even  than  Earl  Grey's,  evidently 
felt  uncomfortable.  They  would  have  preferred  to  let  the 
world  think  the  worst,  rather  than  to  be  caught  uttering 
heroics.  The  effect,  of  course,  is  not  one  of  humility.  I 
have  heard  an  English  aviator  describe  his  exploits  on  the 
Western  front,  and  whenever  the  audience  exhibited  a  dis- 
position to  applaud  him,  he  would  shrug  his  shoulders  and 
say  that  "it  was  nothing"  — which  only  served  to  double 
the  applause.  It  is  not  that  the  Englishman  is  averse  to 
heroism,  or  is  lacking  in  profound  emotions.  But  he  does 
not  wish  to  seem  to  ask  credit  for  his  heroism,  and  he  pre- 
fers to  understate  his  emotions.  There  is  an  anecdote  of 
two  young  EngUshmen  who  were  climbing  a  mountain  in 
Switzerland.  When  they  came  out  on  the  top  and  the  view 
was  spread  before  them,  the  first  exclaimed,  "Well,  well! 
Not  half  badl"  "Yes,"  answered  his  companion,  "but 
don't  rave  Hke  a  bally  poet  about  it." 

There  is  nothing  more  characteristic  of  English  humor  than 
the  puncturing  of  inflated  humanity.  Man  is  never  so 
ridiculous  as  when  he  thinks  himself  most  sublime.  You 
will  find  this  feeling  in  Mr.  Winkle  on  skates,  in  Punch's 
German  family  enjoying  its  morning  hours  of  hate,  and  in  the 
Tommies  who  replied  to  the  German  ''Gott  mit  uns,"  with 
their  "  We've  got  mittens  too."  The  German  with  his  unself- 
consciousness  furnishes  a  fair  mark  for  such  humor.  In 
France  where  everything  tends  to  express  itself,  and  to  ex- 
press itself  adequately,  this  English  repression  is  equally 
unknown.  But  in  England  a  man  lives  in  the  constant  fear 
of  being  caught  declaiming,  and  of  making  himself  ridiculous. 
So  he  plays  safe  and  keeps  his  august  and  solemn  things  to 
himself  with  an  air  of  outward  indifference  or  flippancy. 

The  English  quality  of  reserve  is,  I  am  convinced,  closely 
connected  with  the  English  virtue  and  cult  of  tolerance.  The 
Englishman  does  not  wish  to  be  intruded  upon,  nor  does 
he  have  any  desire  to  intrude  upon  anybody  else,  whether 
man  or  God.  He  is  not  a  mystic  or  a  pantheist  in  his  re- 
ligion, because  he  thinks  God  entitled  to  have  his  privacy 


476 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


respected.  This  probably  has  something  to  do  with  the 
fact  that  Deism,  or  the  philosophy  of  the  absentee  God,  was 
invented  in  England.  The  Englishman  regards  the  attempt 
to  force  your  own  sentiments  and  opinions  upon  others  as 
claiming  too  much  for  them.  And  he  is  not  deeply  concerned 
with  what  other  people  think  and  feel,  provided  they  will 
behave  themselves.  When  other  people  make  themselves 
obnoxious,  they  have  to  be  taken  in  hand;  but  then  if  they 
have  learned  their  lesson,  the  thing  is  to  let  them  go.  *'  When 
we've  pounded  these  Johnnies,"  said  a  British  regular  in  the 
present  war,  ''I  suppose  we'll  give  'em  'Ome  Rule,  same  as 
we  did  the  Boers."  ^  This  attitude  may  imply  pride  and 
narrowness,  or  even  a  certain  lack  of  the  generous  enthusiasm 
that  marks  the  French.  But  from  it  has  sprung  most  of  the 
orderly  liberty  of  the  world.  Wherever  the  Englishman  has 
gone  he  has  taught  men  to  respect  themselves,  and  en- 
couraged them  under  law  to  grow  strong  in  their  own  way. 

rV.    MORAL  CONSERVATISM 

How  does  it  happen  that  the  Englishman's  individualism 
has  not  resulted  in  disintegration,  frivolity  and  weakness? 
I  know  of  only  one  answer  to  this  question.  The  English- 
man is  restrained  by  his  own  tradition  and  moral  code,  and 
by  the  strength  of  his  habits.  He  is  essentially  sober  and 
business-like,  too  much  impregnated  with  the  spirit  of  affairs 
to  allow  himself  to  go  to  excess  in  the  exercise  of  his  Hberties. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  social  and  poUtical  progress 
have  in  England  been  continuous  rather  than  revolutionary. 
He  puts  in  a  patch,  or  builds  an  addition  here  and  there; 
but  never  attempts  to  rebuild  the  whole  structure.  He  is 
steadied  by  his  very  anachronisms.  His  rural  aristocracy, 
and  his  hereditary  monarchy,  live  on  in  the  midst  of  an  in- 
dustrial democracy.  He  retains  his  classical  tradition  in  the 
age  of  science.  He  applies  to  the  conditions  and  problems 
of  the  present,  the  old  maxims  of  the  inherited  morality. 
Compelled  by  the  exigencies  of  war  to  conscript  the  manhood 
and  resources  of  the  nation,  he  does  it  by  appealing  to  the 

^  Quoted  by  Chevrillon,  op.  cit.,  p.  184. 


ENGLISH  NATIONAL  TRAITS 


477 


judgment  of  individuals.  The  effect  is  full  of  incongruities 
and  contradictions,  but  not  being  peculiarly  sensitive  to 
logic,  these  do  not  disturb  him.  The  process  of  change  is 
the  re-adjustment  and  re-adaptation  of  a  living  substance. 

The  Englishman  carries  his  morals  into  his  poHtics.  Unlike 
the  German,  he  refuses  to  admit  that  what  is  base  in  private 
life  can  be  justified  in  the  state.  He  also  refuses,  like  the 
mystic  or  the  casuist,  to  believe  that  what  is  iniquitous  in  the 
secular  world  can  be  excused  or  transmuted  in  religion.  It  is 
the  morals  of  Christianity  rather  than  its  metaphysics  that 
have  appealed  to  him.  He  acknowledges  but  one  code,  and 
carries  it  with  him  wherever  he  goes. 

The  English  nobility  and  rural  gentry,  who  have  doubtless 
seen  their  day,  have  nevertheless  served  their  day.  Their 
stability  in  the  midst  of  the  rising  tide  of  liberalism  and  de- 
mocracy has  been  due  to  their  usefulness.  Having  under- 
taken the  job  of  ruUng  England  they  have  done  it  well.  To 
do  the  thing  well,  whether  it  be  ruling  England,  or  India  or 
Egypt,  or  performing  the  humbler  duties  of  a  local  magis- 
trate, has  been  a  matter  of  noblesse  oblige.  The  English 
aristocracy  has  emphasized  its  responsibilities  more  than  its 
privileges. 

The  English  have  served  the  world  not  from  any  grandilo- 
quent sense  of  a  divine  mission,  but  as  the  largely  unconscious 
and  uncalculated  effect  of  their  sturdy  virtues.  They  have 
not  invented  the  great  ideals  of  modem  democracy,  nor  have 
they  been  the  most  enthusiastic  and  self-forgetful  champions 
of  these  ideals.  But  they  have  made  them  work.  Parlia- 
mentary government,  reUgious  toleration,  personal  liberty, 
popular  suffrage,  and,  in  our  own  day,  international  federal- 
ism, have  through  the  English  become  estabUshed  historical 
facts,  so  that  it  is  unnecessary  to  argue  their  practicability. 

In  writing  of  England  one  cannot  but  be  deeply  conscious 
that  no  modern  nation,  saving  possibly  our  own,  is  being  so 
profoundly  altered  by  the  present  war.  Perhaps  little  that 
I  have  said  (and  I  have  only  restated  the  commonplaces  of 
opinion)  will  be  applicable  to  the  England  of  to-morrow.  It 
is  difficult  to  see  how  the  insular  aloofness  of  England  can 


478 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


persist  when  even  the  continental  aloofness  of  America  is  a 
thing  of  the  past.  By  the  routes  of  the  air  Berlin  is  as  near 
to  London  as  it  is  to  Paris.  The  submarine  has  made  the 
British  Channel  a  source  of  weakness  rather  than  of  strength. 
The  EngUsh  have  entered  into  a  brotherhood  of  war  which 
they  will  scarcely  abandon  in  the  time  of  peace.  All  that  is 
insular,  the  pride  of  self-sufficiency  and  the  reserve  of  isola- 
tion, will  tend  to  disappear.  The  successes  of  methodical 
Germany  will  scarcely  encourage  a  return  to  the  old  im- 
promptu and  piece-meal  ways  that  were  once  sufficient.  And 
the  rapid  advance  of  social  democracy  will  discredit  tradition 
and  establish  privilege.  But  it  is  to  the  interest  of  all  man- 
kind that  the  substance  of  English  individualism  shall  re- 
main: her  sturdy  simplicity,  her  tenacious  moralism,  and 
above  all  her  political  genius  for  finding  the  necessary  way 
between  anarchy  and  tyranny. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 
GENERAL  CHARACTERISTICS  OF  BRITISH  THOUGHT 

I.    FUNDAMENTAL  EMPIRICISM 

The  term  "empiricism''  has  gradually  come  to  acquire  a 
meaning  that  coincides  almost  exactly  with  the  spirit  and 
the  method  that  distinguish  the  thought  of  Great  Britain 
from  that  of  the  Continent.  Empiricism  means  reliance  on 
experience  or  on  first-hand  acquaintance  with  the  facts, 

British  philosophers,  as  we  have  seen,  have  ordinarily 
been  men  of  affairs,  or  men  "of  experience."  They  have 
brought  even  into  philosophy  that  quality  of  sagacity  which 
has  led  to  the  somewhat  unsympathetic  judgment,  voiced 
by  Carlyle  and  Taine  among  others,  that  the  English  are 
stupid  in  discourse,  but  wise  in  action.  I  suppose  that  it 
would  be  generally  agreed  that  the  most  eminent  British 
philosophers  are  Bacon,  Hobbes,  Locke,  Berkeley,  Hume, 
Spencer  and;John  Stuart  Mill.  All  of  these  men  save  Berke- 
ley and  Spencer  were  intimately  associated  with  the  politi- 
cal events  of  their  day;  Berkeley  was  a  Bishop  of  the 
Established  Church,  and  Spencer,  who  was  an  engineer  in 
his  early  years,  was  afterwards  almost  wholly  preoccupied 
with  the  subject-matter  of  the  physical  and  social  sciences. 
None  of  these  men  was  steeped  in  a  purely  philosophical 
tradition,  nor  wholly  absorbed  in  the  philosophical  activities. 
In  nearly  every  case  they  found  their  livelihood  and  "  career '' 
elsewhere,  and  displayed  in  their  philosophizing  an  interest 
and  cast  of  mind  more  common  in  the  market-place  or  forum 
than  in  the  hermit's  cell  or  the  professor's  study.  Whatever 
their  faults  they  were  not  those  of  formalism,  mysticism  or 
pedantry. 

The  empirical  mind  which  these  thinkers  represent,  is  the 
mind  which  refuses  to  commit  itself  irrevocably  in  advance 

479 


48o 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT   OF  IDEALS 


of  the  evidence  of  fact.  Though  it  employs  the  reason,  it 
does  not  altogether  trust  it;  and  is  more  prone  to  go  to  excess 
in  the  other  direction,  as  when  Hume  dissolved  knowledge 
into  the  flux  of  sense-impressions.  Such  a  mind,  even  when 
it  invokes  the  aid  of  reason,  prefers  to  amend  its  judgments 
in  the  light  of  new  facts  even  at  the  cost  of  logical  coherence. 
Since  facts  cannot  be  controlled,  but  have  to  be  accepted  as 
they  come  and  when  they  come,  the  empirical  mind  is  in- 
clined to  be  provisional  and  cautious  in  its  temper,  and  does 
not  speak  with  the  accent  of  finality.  Though  its  results  may 
lack  systematic  coherence,  they  are  almost  invariably  correct 
in  matters  of  detail.  Since  an  initial  error  is  not  consistently 
carried  through,  the  whole  may  lack  absolute  truth,  but  it 
will  not  be  absolutely  false.  The  empirical  mind  will  be  as 
disinclined  to  accept  authority  as  it  is  disinclined  to  accept 
the  conclusions  of  pure  reason.  It  will  have  more  confidence 
in  its  own  experience  than  in  the  infallibility  of  the  wise  or  the 
prestige  of  the  powerful.  It  will  be  suspicious  of  inspiration, 
ecstasy  and  enthusiasm,  as  tending  to  blind  the  eyes  and 
prevent  sobriety  of  judgment.  It  regards  mysticism  as  a 
kind  of  mystification. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  empiricism  has  its  own  characteristic 
mode  of  conservatism.  It  implies  a  respect  for  past  experi- 
ence, or  for  what  has  already  proved  itself  by  trial  and  use. 
It  is  this,  for  example,  that  accounts  for  the  fact  that  the 
French  Revolution  did  not  kindle  a  flame  of  enthusiasm  in 
England,  but  was  for  many  decades  regarded  as  a  horrible 
example  of  the  effects  of  a  headlong  and  reckless  idealism. 
The  English  mind  is  not  conservative  in  the  sense  of  adhering 
to  preconceived  formulas,  or  in  the  sense  of  submitting  to 
established  authorities  merely  because  they  are  established; 
but  tends  to  rely  on  what  has  been  tested  in  practice,  and  to 
prefer  the  imperfect  good  that  is  already  in  hand  to  the  ideal 
perfection  that  is  promised  by  the  speculative  reason.  Such 
a  mind  moves  forward,  but  it  does  not  leap  forward.  It 
makes  haste  slowly,  without  risking  what  it  has  already 
gained.  It  does  not  put  all  its  eggs  in  one  basket;  but  tries 
out  its  new  policies  before  it  embarks  upon  them  and  com- 


BRITISH  THOUGHT 


481 


mits  itself  to  them.  The  result  is  that  England  is  often 
behind  the  world  in  matters  that  require  bold  and  sweeping 
change,  as,  for  example,  in  popular  education.  English 
social  reform  is  not  preventive  but  remedial;  and  the  remedy 
does  not  come  until  the  evil  is  vividly  felt,  often  until  it  is 
seriously  aggravated.  But  though  the  reform  may  be  tardy, 
it  is  usually  sure,  and  needs  neither  to  be  undone  nor  to  be 
done  over  again. 

There  is  one  further  feature  of  British  empiricism  which 
must  be  included  in  this  brief  summary.     The  late  Mr.  A. 
W.  Benn  refers  to  the  *^fact  of  free  exchange,  reciprocity, 
correlation  and  circulation,''  which  is  *^so  characteristic  of 
English  habits,  and  indeed  the  fundamental  form  of  English 
life."  ^     English  philosophy,  like  common-sense,  recognizes 
only  the  one  world  of  common  experience,  and  feels  no  need 
of  using  any  language  but  the  everyday  language  of  litera- 
ture   or    of    colloquial    discourse.     The    layman    needs    no 
initiation  into  British  philosophy  nor  any  glossary  of  tech- 
nical terms.     It  has  for  the  most  part  been  written  by  lay- 
men, and  in  the  same  terms  which  these  laymen  have  used 
elsewhere  in  politics  or  history  or  science.     The   typical 
English  thinker  is  an  amateur  rather  than  a  professional. 
This  is  sometimes  thought  to  result  in  shallowness  and 
dilettantism.     But  what  is  lost  in  profundity  is  gained  in 
breadth.     The  English  mind  is  widely  informed,  liberal  and 
well- ventilated ;  it  is  not  divided  into  sealed  compartments. 
English  thought  may  lack  organization  and  specialization, 
but  what  is  done  in  one  field  is  always  illuminated  and  en- 
riched by  what  is  done  in  others.     In  a  sense  Hume  and 
Mill  were  dilettante,  since  they  were  almost  equally  proficient 
in  philosophy,  history  and   economics.     But   their  philos- 
ophy has  a  quality  of  directness  and  pertinence   that  re- 
flects a  mind  that  is  accustomed  to  grapple  with  social  life; 
and  their  history  and  economics  has  not  suffered  from  their 
familiarity  with  logic  and  ethics.     The  British  philosopher 
is  governed  by  the  instinctive  feeling  that  what  is  true 
anywhere  is  true  everywhere,  and  that  it  ought  to  be  intel- 

^  History  of  English  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  Vol.  II,  p.  147. 


482 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


ligible  to  a  human  mind  regardless  of  the  peculiar  habits  or 
occupation  of  its  possessor. 

n.    BRITISH  IDEALISM 

It  will  readily  be  understood  that  the  English  mind  is  not 
peculiarly  inclined  to  metaphysics.  The  metaphysical  in- 
quiry leads  beyond  the  limits  of  experience,  and  must  stake 
its  conclusions  either  on  a  priori  reasoning,  or  on  a  bold  act  of 
speculative  faith.  The  kind  of  proofs  that  the  British  mind 
craves,  those  of  sense-perception  or  experimentation,  are 
not  possible  in  this  field.  The  great  system-builders  in 
philosophy  have  required  a  sense  of  the  absolute  finality  of 
some  set  of  first  principles,  or  of  some  deeper  vision;  and 
this  the  Englishman  rarely  feels.  It  was  this  shrinking  from 
the  unfathomable  that  led  the  greatest  British  philosophers, 
Locke  and  Hume,  to  the  study  of  the  mind  by  *Hhe  plain 

historical  method.'^ 

Needless  to  say  the  British  have  not  escaped  metaphysics 
altogether.  But  as  a  rule  their  metaphysics  has  been  neither 
bold  nor  constructive.  There  has  always  been  in  Great 
Britain  as  elsewhere  an  apologetic  metaphysics  which  has 
sought  to  justify  the  beliefs  of  Christianity.  The  English- 
man being  disincUned  to  accept  authority,  such  secular 
support  has  been  more  eagerly  sought  in  Great  Britain  than 
elsewhere  in  Christendom;  and  the  aUiance  between  Chris- 
tianity and  philosophy  led  to  the  various  compromises  of 
liberal  belief  which  were  so  notably  characteristic  of  Great 
Britain  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  Deism,  Unitarianism, 
Latitudinarianism  and  all  the  rest  resulted  from  an  eager 
desire  to  be  Christian  without  being  superstitious. 

Much  of  British  metaphysics  may  be  said  to  have  existed 
by  default,  that  is  by  virtue  of  leaving  undisturbed  the  meta- 
physics of  religion  or  common  sense.  The  metaphysics  of 
Locke,  for  example,  is  mainly  the  body  of  inherited  belief 
which  he  has  not  yet  overhauled,  and  which  with  character- 
istic indifference  to  logical  consistency,  he  incorporates  with- 
out assimilating.  Hume,  who  overhauls  it,  rejects  it  as 
incapable  of  empirical  proof;  and  the  Common  Sense  School 


BRITISH  THOUGHT 


483 


of  Reid,  recoiling  from  such  a  radical  step,  proposes  to  swal- 
low anything  rather  than  to  depart  from  tried  and  familiar 
tenets  of  popular  metaphysics. 

I.  Empirical  Idealism.  The  only  bold  metaphysical 
doctrine  which  originated  in  Great  Britain  and  which  has 
persisted  there  is  the  idealism  of  Bishop  Berkeley.  This 
philosophy  has  two  parts.  That  which  is  most  original  is 
the  thesis  which  we  have  discussed  above  under  the  name  of 
phenomenalism.  But  this  thesis  is  radically  empirical.  It 
consists  of  identifying  nature  with  the  ideas  of  the  mind.  It 
is  the  refusal  to  acknowledge  an  underlying  substance  that 
cannot  be  perceived;  or  the  unwilUngness  to  subordinate  the 
obvious  to  the  doubtful,  the  given  to  the  inferred.  Idealism 
in  this  sense  has  lived  on  through  Hume  to  Mill,  and  more 
recently  to  the  positivists  such  as  Huxley  and  Karl  Pearson, 
and  to  the  personal  idealists  such  as  Schiller.  The  other 
part  of  Berkeley's  philosophy  was  his  Christian  theism,  which 
led  him  despite  his  empirical  professions  to  regard  God  as 
the  author  of  nature  and  so  of  that  order  of  perceptions  to 
which  nature  had  been  reduced.  This  part  of  Berkeley's 
teaching  is  both  less  original  and  also  less  persistent,  through 
being  less  congenial  to  the  British  mind. 

Since  the  importation  into  Great  Britain  of  the  Kantian 
or  German  type  of  idealism,  the  empirical  tradition  has 
shown  itself  in  the  tendency  to  compromise.  Personal 
ideaUsm,  as  we  have  seen,  is  characterized  by  an  unwilling- 
ness to  accept  the  logic  of  Kantianism,  where  this  conflicts 
with  the  moral  experience.  It  is  Kantianism  balked  by  a 
British  insistence  upon  the  rights  of  the  individual,  the  plain 
facts  of  evil,  and  the  conventional  moral  code.  Two  books 
published  since  the  opening  of  the  war  exhibit  this  com- 
promise quite  unmistakably.  One  of  these  is  entitled  The 
Faith  and  the  War,  a  "  Series  of  Essays  by  members  of  the 
Churchmen's  Union  and  others  on  the  Religious  Difficulties 
Aroused  by  the  Present  Condition  of  the  World."  The 
editor,  Mr.  F.  J.  Foakes- Jackson,  says:  *^ There  is  a  con- 
sensus of  opinion  expressed  in  the  first  four  essays,  that  to 
understand  the  significance  of  evil  in  the  world,  it  is  necessary 


484 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


to  recognize  that,  under  the  present  disposition  at  any  rate, 
there  is  a  plurality  of  forces  which  God  permits  to  exercise 
control  over  the  course  of  events.''  ^  Pluralism,  in  other 
words,  is  extorted  from  these  writers  by  the  present  course 
of  events.  The  fact  of  evil,  now  freshly  impressed  upon  the 
British  mind  by  the  mahce  of  the  enemy  and  by  the  horrors 
of  war,  is  accepted  as  a  more  certain  thing  than  that  unified 
perfection  which  is  the  logical  conclusion  from  the  premises 
of  Kantian  idealism. 

The  second  book,  entitled  The  International  Crisis,  in  its 
Ethical  and  Psychological  Aspects,  is  chatty,  fragmentary, 
empirical  and  inconclusive.  ^  UnHke  the  similar  volumes 
produced  in  Germany,  there  is  no  common  doctrine  or 
common  formula.  That  which  unifies  it  is  never  anywhere 
expKcitly  stated,  the  disposition,  namely,  to  judge  in  the 
Hght  of  the  new  experience,  and  to  judge  by  the  standards  of 
human  interest  and  traditional  morality.  Only  one  of  the 
essays,  Bosanquet's  ''Patriotism  in  the  Perfect  State,"  can 
be  said  to  be  the  carrying  out  of  preconceived  and  funda- 
mental ideas,  and  this  essay  is  in  my  judgment  entirely  out 
of  touch  with  the  spirit,  institutions  and  poHcy  of  Great 
Britain.  It  is  a  striking  anomaly  both  in  its  philosophical 
self-consistency  and  in  its  allegiance  to  an  aHen  creed. 
It  represents  the  tendency  which  we  have  next  to 
consider. 

In  every  nation  there  is  a  school  of  thought  which  appeals 
to  rebellious  spirits  who  dissent  from  what  is  broadly  char- 
acteristic of  their  intellectual  environment,  and  who  are 
moved  to  dissent  all  the  more  emphatically  because  of  the  feel- 
ing that  what  they  are  denying  is  somehow  in  spite  of  them- 
selves in  their  very  blood.  In  this  way  the  Germans  reacted 
against  Hegel  in  the  last  century,  and  the  French  against 
Comte  and  the  tradition  of  science.  So  at  the  very  time 
when  the  Germans  were  importing  English  ideas  to  rid  them 

*  Pp.  X,  XI.  The  four  authors  in  question  are  Percy  Gardner,  Alice  Gard- 
ner, Hastings  Rashdall  and  the  Editor. 

»      *  The  contributors  "are  Eleanor  M.  Sidgwick,  Gilbert  Murray,  A.  C.  Brad- 
ley, L.  P.  Jacks,  G.  F.  Stout  and  B.  Bosanquet. . 


BRITISH   THOUGHT 


485 


of  Hegelian  metaphysics,  the  English  were  importing  Ger- 
man ideas  to  rid  them  of  Hume  and  the  tradition  of  in- 
dividuaKsm. 

In  order  to  explain  the  great  hold  of  German  idealism  upon 
the  British  mind  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  we  have  first 
to  introduce  a  very  broad  consideration  which  affects  all  the 
thought  of  modern  Christendom.  Whatever  we  think  of  its 
merits,  there  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt  that  the  Kantian 
argument  for  the  creative  function  of  the  mind  in  knowledge 
has  proved  the  most  successful  weapon  with  which  to  save 
the  spiritualistic  metaphysics  from  the  threat  of  science. 
Any  philosophy  which  will  serve  this  purpose  and  ally  itself 
with  the  religious  tradition  is  sure  of  a  following.  The  reign 
of  Sir  William  Hamilton,  of  Edward  Caird  and  of  T.  H. 
Green,  is  in  large  part  due,  Uke  the  reign  of  Bergson  to-day, 
to  its  anti-materialistic  polemic.  It  was  the  rall3dng-point 
and  for  the  time  being  the  stoutest  stronghold  for  those  who 
sought  to  defend  themselves  against  both  the  frontal  attack 
of  naturalism  and  the  intrigue  of  scepticism. 

But  we  find  a  more  adequate  explanation  of  the  trans- 
plantation of  German  ideahsm  to  British  soil  if  we  consider 
the  matter  more  narrowly  in  relation  to  specifically  British 
conditions.  We  find  that  the  imported  German  idealism 
allies  itself  with  two  forms  of  domestic  reaction  against  what 
is  characteristically  British  —  with  the  romantic  reaction 
against  utiUtarianism,  and  with  the  social,  institutional  and 
metaphysical  reaction  against  individualism.  Neither  utili- 
tarianism nor  individualism  has  ceased  to  be  characteristic- 
ally British,  but  each  has  its  own  peculiar  limitations  or 
excesses;  and  when,  in  his  moods  of  self-criticism,  the  Eng- 
lishman looks  for  an  antidote  he  finds  it  necessary  to  import 
it  from  the  continent. 

2.  The  Reaction  against  Utilitarianism.  The  romantic 
reaction  against  utilitarianism  is  most  perfectly  represented 
by  Thomas  Carlyle.  This  thinker  is  unmistakably  a  Brit- 
isher criticising  himself.  He  has  the  temperament  of  a 
Jeremiah,  who  rouses  his  people  from  complacency  by  pre- 
dicting calamity.     He  is  divided  against  himself.     On  the 


486 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


one  hand  he  is  an  Old  Testament  Puritan,  a  scientific 
rationalist  rejecting  supernaturaUsm,  mysticism  and  religious 
forms,  a  man  of  strong  practical  bias  who  beHeves  in  going  to 
work  without  waiting  to  understand  either  yourself  or  God. 
All  of  these  things  may  be  said  to  be  characteristically 
British,  and  to  reflect  what  is  deeper  and  more  instinctive  in 
Carlyle  himself.  But  on  the  other  hand  he  is  the  prophet 
of  heroic  inspiration,  of  idealistic  faith,  and  even  of  a  spiritu- 
aUstic  view  of  nature.  We  can,  I  think,  understand  this 
revolutionary  Carlyle  who  scandalized  and  invigorated  his 
age  if  we  consider  him  in  the  light  of  the  hmitations  to  which 
the  normal  British  view  of  Ufe  is  pecuHarly  liable. 

In  the  first  place,  utiUtarianism  is  banal.  It  tends  to  a 
levelling  down  of  values  to  mere  creature  comforts,  which 
it  is  interested  in  distributing  as  widely  as  possible.  Where 
these  creature  comforts  are  obtained  it  tends  to  be  satisfied 
with  them,  and  to  lose  the  incentive  to  higher  aspiration. 
It  tends  to  overvalue  what  is  commonplace;  and  its  very 
humanity  inclines  it  to  tolerate  inferiority  merely  because 
it  is  human.  In  the  second  place,  utilitarianism  is  careful 
of  the  consequences.  It  is  the  morality  of  prudence,  in 
which  the  moral  agent  drives  a  bargain  and  insists  on  being 
paid.  The  virtue  of  right  action,  according  to  the  utiUtarian, 
lies  in  the  pleasurable  satisfactions  to  which  it  conduces. 
Such  morahty  is  thrifty,  provident  and  calculating. 

Carlyle's  objection  to  such  utiUtarianism  is  in  part  founded 
on  his  moral  temper.  He  has  the  Scotch  Calvinistic  feeUng 
that  the  way  of  righteousness  must  be  hard  and  narrow,  the 
stern  moraUst's  suspicion  of  whatever  is  easy  and  natural. 
He  speaks  for  the  morality  of  duty,  for  that  morality  which 
is  beyond  price  and  will  go  to  the  stake  for  principle.  ^  He 
sees  that  all  sound  virtue  must  be  of  this  uncompromising 
mood;  and  that  the  greed  for  happiness  leads  to  the  softening 
of  the  moral  fibre.  Duty  is  not  rewarded  by  happiness,  nor 
does  the  motive  of  happiness  incline  a  man  to  duty.  ''What 
then?"  he  asks,  ''Is  the  heroic  inspiration  we  name  Virtue 
but  some  passion,  some  bubble  of  the  blood,  bubbling  in  the 
direction  others  profit  by?     I  know  not.     Only  this  I  know, 


BRITISH  THOUGHT 


487 


if  what  thou  namest  Happiness  be  our  true  aim,  then  are  we 

all  astray."  ^ 

Thus  Carlyle  is  prompted  even  by  his  own  native  Scotch 
tradition  to  insist  that  virtue  must  be  heroic;  neither  easy 
nor  profitable,  but  hard  and  uncompromising.  But  begin- 
ning with  this  difference  of  emphasis,  and  having  the  zeal 
of  the  reformer  and  the  imaginative  power  of  creative  genius, 
he  proceeds  to  idealize  heroism  and  erect  it  into  an  independ- 
ent and  supreme  value.  Even  a  merciless  and  unscrupulous 
tyrant  like  Frederick  the  Great,  for  whom  Carlyle  feels  a 
natural  aversion,  becomes  a  symbol  of  the  hero's  mighty 
resolution  and  personal  elevation.  The  heroic  quality  is  the 
great  thing  —  a  greater  thing  than  either  scruple  or  utility. 
Thus  any  man  of  spirit,  feeling  the  flatness  of  humdrum 
existence,  with  its  tedious  monotony  of  commonplaceness 
and  its  timid  calculation  of  little  gains  and  losses  will  have 
his  moments  of  revulsion  and  disgust  when  he  would  be 
thankful  for  greatness,  even  of  the  volcanic  sort  that  leaves 
destruction  in  its  path.  And  when  a  man  is  in  this  mood  he 
is  wilUng  that  Nietzsche  or  Carlyle  should  speak  for  him.  For 
the  moment  he  is  like  them  sick  to  death  of  charity  and 
benevolence.  He  is  willing  that  the  strong  should  crush  the 
weak,  if  only  he  will  bring  into  the  world  again  the  glory  of 

strength.  . 

But  what  has  this  to  do  with  German  idealism?  The 
answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  When  heroism  justfies  itself  as  a 
supreme  standard  of  action  it  resorts  to  romantic  ideaUsm. 
The  hero  who  disregards  consequences  and  cannot  appeal  to 
them  for  the  justification  of  his  acts,  looks  for  a  sanction 
within  himself.  He  legitimates  the  act  by  the  heroic  self 
from  which  it  proceeds.  He  values  the  act  for  the  spirit  of 
its  performance.  In  place  of  the  rational  justification  of  the 
UtiUtarian,  there  is  the  faith  that  what  is  so  mighty  must  be 
right.  But  this  cannot  be  the  case  if  the  heroic  spirit  is  no 
more  than  a  product  of  nature  and  a  creature  of  private 
whims  and  caprices.    The  hero  must  be  thought  to  be  the 

1  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship. 


488 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


incarnation  of  something  greater  than  himself.  The  heroic 
spirit  is  thus  objectified.  It  is  identified  with  a  spirit  in- 
forming nature,  and  eventually  with  a  universal  spirit  that 
pervades  and  rules  the  world.  The  heroic  spirit,  having  been 
idealized,  is  then  idolized  and  deified;  and  what  begins  as  an 
emphasis  on  moral  courage  ends  with  an  ideahstic  meta- 
physics. The  revolt  of  the  British  moralist  against  the 
commonplaceness  and  providence  of  his  own  sturdy  virtues 
thus  enters  into  alliance  with  the  speculative  doctrines  of  an 
alien  philosophy. 

3.  The  Reaction  against  Individualism.  The  second 
British  reaction  against  things  characteristically  British  is 
the  reaction  against  individualism.  ^  During  the  first  half 
of  the  last  century  the  trend  of  economic  and  political 
thought  had  been  in  the  direction  of  the  emancipation  of  the 
individual  from  social  control.  According  to  the  principle 
of  laissez-faire  all  that  was  necessary  for  human  well-being 
was  to  leave  the  individual  to  his  own  devices  under  the 
beneficent  working  of  the  principles  of  self-interest  and 
competition.  But  by  the  middle  of  the  century  it  had 
already  become  apparent  that  the  effects  of  the  let-alone 
poHcy  were  far  from  beneficent.  The  new  industrialism  had 
introduced  evils  which  it  was  in  itself  incapable  of  remedying 
and  it  began  to  be  apparent  that  the  aid  of  the  state  must  be 
invoked.  This  feeUng  that  there  is  a  grave  social  problem 
which  only  society  itself  in  its  collective  aspect  can  solve, 
furnishes  the  chief  motive  for  the  internal  policy  of  Glad- 
stonian  liberalism,  and  is  one  of  the  deeper  motives  of  Vic- 
torian literature.  It  led  even  Mill,  utilitarian  though  he 
was,  to  question  his  individualistic  premises;  and  finally  it 
led,  in  the  idealism  of  T.  H.  Green,  to  the  entire  abandon- 
ment of  these  premises.  *'The  mereremovalof  compulsion," 
says  this  writer,  ''the  mere  enabling  a  man  to  do  as  he  likes, 
is  in  itself  no  contribution  to  real  freedom.  ...  It  is  the 
business  of  the  state  ...  to  maintain  the  conditions  with- 

*  For  an  excellent  summary  of  this  reaction  with  special  reference  to  the 
influence  of  idealism,  cf.  G.  H.  Sabine,  "The  Social  Origin  of  Absolute  Ideal- 
ism," Journal  of  Philosophy ^  Vol.  XII  (191 5). 


BRITISH  THOUGHT 


489 


out  which  a  free  exercise  of  the  human  faculties  is  im- 
possible.'^  ^ 

Here  again  the  momentum  of  the  reaction  carries  British 
thought  to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  paves  the  way  for  the 
widespread  adoption  of  a  philosophy  that  is  in  principle  quite 
at  variance  with  what  is  characteristic  and  persistent  in 
British  thought.  The  movement  begins  with  the  idea  of 
human  interdependence.  This  interdependence  may  at  first 
be  conceived  in  terms  that  are  entirely  consistent  with  the 
fundamental  premises  of  individualism.  It  may  mean  only 
that  one  individual's  happiness  requires  the  co-operation  of 
other  individuals  and  the  intervention  of  the  state.  A 
second  step  is  taken  when  it  is  conceived  that  society  is  not 
merely  a  means  to  private  ends  already  existing,  a  remedy 
for  poverty  and  misery,  but  is  also  a  source  of  new  values. 
This  step  is  due  to  the  new  psychology  which  reveals  the 
essentially  social  character  of  human  nature.  If  man 
naturally  possesses  sympathies  and  other-regarding  impulses, 
then  he  will  need  society  for  its  own  sake;  not  because  it 
provides  him  with  security,  order,  justice  and  the  material 
conditions  of  life,  but  because  it  provides  hiin  with  the 
opportunity  of  fellowship  and  intercourse.  So  far  the 
happiness  of  individuals  remains  the  end  of  life;  although 
this  happiness  is  now  conceived  as  reciprocal  and  collective, 
rather  than  as  exclusive  and  private.  This  may  be  said  to 
be  the  philosophy  of  Victorian  liberalism.  But  it  is  now  a 
short  step  to  a  radically  different  view,  the  view,  namely  that 
the  happiness  of  the  individual  is  not  the  end  at  all,  but  only 
a  means  to  the  end  of  society.  And  here  we  have  reached 
the  distinctively  ideahstic  doctrine.  It  is  now  no  longer  held 
that  society  is  an  attribute  of  the  individual,  but  that  the 
individual  is  a  mode  or  aspect  of  society.  The  reaUty  is  the 
larger  organic  whole,  ^thin  which  the  individual  man  realizes 
himself.  Instead  of  judging  society  by  its  contribution  to 
the  good  of  component  individuals,  these  are  to  judge  their 
good  by  their  contribution  to  the  social  whole. 

And  now  the  logic  of  the  new  premises  begins  to  make 

*  Quoted  by  Sabine,  op.  cit.,  p.  171. 


490 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


itself  felt.  In  what  is  the  social  good  to  consist?  If  we  are 
to  avoid  a  vicious  circle  we  must  suppose  that  society  has  an 
end  of  its  own.  But  how  is  this  end  to  be  discovered?  Not 
by  consulting  the  desires  or  even  the  aspirations  of  individ- 
uals, for  these  are  only  partial,  and  must  appeal  to  the  higher 
social  authority  to  justify  themselves.  The  duty  of  the 
individual,  as  Mr.  Bradley  insists,  is  to  do  what  his  social 
station  or  function  requires.^  If  the  social  end  is  to  regulate 
the  conduct  of  individuals  then  it  must  have  a  way  of  mak- 
ing itself  known  independently  of  the  will  of  the  individual. 
This  may  be  conceived  as  a  higher  will,  immanent  in  the 
individual,  but  opposing  its  more  rational  or  inspired  man- 
dates to  the  individual's  merely  private  inclination  or 
caprice.  This  is  the  romantic  solution,  the  more  subjective 
and  lawless  version  of  the  matter,  which  must  after  all  leave 
it  to  the  individual  to  determine  whether  his  judgment  in 
any  given  case  is  social  or  merely  individual.  But  it  is 
difl&cult  to  conduct  the  affairs  of  mankind  upon  such  a  basis. 
There  are  two  other  alternatives.  One  is  to  regard  history 
as  the  unfolding  of  the  social  will;  which  points  to  the  in- 
dividual's accepting  of  tradition  and  of  ''destiny"  without 
any  attempt  to  interfere  with  them.  The  other  is  to  regard 
the  state  as  the  organ  of  the  social  will,  which  implies  that 
the  individual  shall  prostrate  himself  before  political  authori- 
ties and  accept  their  official  decrees  and  poHcies  as  an  in- 
fallible moral  guide.  Beyond  the  individual  society  as 
expressing  itself  in  the  state  there  lie  the  greater  unities  of 
human  evolution  and  the  absolute,  each  in  turn  superseding 
the  lesser.  But  the  verdict  of  history  and  the  will  of  the 
Absolute  are  remoter  and  more  obscure  than  the  mandates 
of  the  state,  which  supplies  that  close  supervision  and 
definite  guidance  which  the  fragmentary  individual  requires 
from  something  completer  and  ''higher"  than  himself. 
These  are  the  well-known  doctrines  which  have  served  to 
justify  the  state-fanaticism  of  England's  bitterest  enemy. 
No  British  ideaUst  has  seen  this  sort  of  idealism  through, 

1  Cf.  F.  H.  Bradley:  Ethical  Studies. 


BRITISH  THOUGHT 


491 


and  none  has  approved  the  policy  which  the  German  very 
consistently  associates  with  it.  Mr.  Bosanquet,  whose  views 
we  have  considered  at  some  length  above,  has  come  the 
closest  to  it;  but  even  he  finds  himself,  in  his  practical  judg- 
ments, more  embarrassed  than  fortified  by  such  premises. 
And  British  social  and  political  policy  remains,  so  far  as  I 
can  see,  entirely  unaffected  by  them.  They  have  obtained 
a  footing  in  British  thought  because  they  have  served  to 
correct  the  defects  of  the  traditional  individualism.  They 
provide  a  means  of  amending  individualism,  but  there  is 
no  widespread  disposition  to  accept  them  in  its  place. 

When  the  utilitarian  and  individuaUstic  tradition  is  modi- 
fied without  being  superseded  by  German  idealism,  the  result 
is  the  new  liberalism.  The  ultimate  standard  of  judgment 
is  still  the  happiness  and  well-being  of  individuals,  severally 
regarded.  But  this  in  itself  is  a  most  exacting  ideal,  which 
requires  the  heroic  spirit,  a  constructive  imagination  and 
the  methods  both  of  private  co-operation  and  of  state- 
intervention.  Furthermore  the  good  of  the  aggregate  of 
individuals  must  be  conceived  not  merely  in  terms  of  creature 
comforts,  but  in  terms  of  the  aesthetic,  intellectual  and  social 
interests  as  well.  It  must  be  a  civilized  life  and  a  life 
together.  All  of  this  is  consistent  with  the  ineradicable 
British  conviction  that  evil  is  in  fact  evil;  that  the  good  is 
not  guaranteed  either  by  history  or  by  authority,  but  must 
be  achieved  by  the  moral  judgment  and  the  moral  will  of 
censorious  and  resolute  individuals. 


III.    BRITISH  ETHICS 

It  is  characteristic  of  British  thought  that  the  subject  of 
ethics  should  have  been  independently  pursued.  In  Ger- 
many and  France  ethics  has  as  a  rule  been  incidental  to 
general  philosophy.  But  ever  since  the  beginning  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century  there  has  been  a  succession  of  British 
"moralists"  who  have  made  important  contributions  to 
ethics  without  showing  either  interest  or  aptitude  for  more 
fundamental    problems.    The    history    of    English    ethics 


492 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


embraces  three  broad  tendencies:    the  ethics  of  conscience, 
utilitarianism  and  the  ethics  of  self-realization. 

I.  The  Ethics  of  Conscience.  The  interest  of  the  British 
thinkers  in  the  faculty  of  conscience  may  be  traced  to  two 
underlying  causes.  It  has  been  due,  in  the  first  place,  to  the 
British  predilection  for  psychology,  or  for  an  examination 
of  the  mind's  ideas  as  being  open  to  direct  empirical  obser- 
vation. Even  more  fundamentally  it  is  due  to  the  British 
cult  of  moral  self-reliance.  None  of  us  will  soon  forget  the 
suspense  of  the  opening  days  of  the  war,  when  British  poHcy 
was  waiting  until  the  people  of  Great  Britain  should  have 
made  up  their  minds.  When  the  decision  came  it  was  a 
moral  decision  and  neither  the  execution  of  a  preconceived 
plan  nor  the  manifestation  of  a  hasty  impulse.  The  British 
recruiting  campaign,  as  has  been  said  by  a  French  observer, 
was  carried  on  by  the  same  methods  that  are  employed  by 
the  religious  revivahst  or  the  temperance  agitator.  It  was 
necessary  to  persuade  individuals  that  war  was  their  duty. 
And  never  before  in  the  world's  history  have  three  million 
men  been  recruited  by  such  methods.  The  reforms  of  the 
Victorian  era  were  unsystematic  and  often  belated,  but  the 
abolition  of  slavery,  the  measures  for  poor  relief,  the  electoral 
reform,  the  CathoHc  emancipation,  were  all  motivated  by 
moral  indignation. 

The  individual  man,  then,  is  endowed  with  a  capacity  to 
find  the  right  and  the  wrong  for  himself.  This  capacity  has 
been  so  greatly  emphasized  as  to  lead  to  the  view  that  it 
constitutes  a  separate  organ  or  faculty.  Some  have  con- 
ceived it  as  a  sort  of  rational  intuition,  others  as  a  sort  of 
sense,  or  form  of  taste.  But  however  constituted  its  pos- 
session renders  the  individual  morally  competent  —  not  a 
creature  of  institutions,  but  the  creator  and  remaker  of 
institutions.  That  such  a  view  has  not  led  to  a  disintegrat- 
ing subjectivism  is  due  to  the  fact  that  a  stable  and  common 
content  of  conscience  has  been  supplied  by  tradition.  It  is 
assumed  that  the  staple  virtues  of  Christendom  are  moral 
finaUties,  which  it  is  the  function  of  conscience  to  reveal. 
Conscience  is  not  a  source  of  virtue,  but  rather  an  organ  by 


BRITISH  THOUGHT 


493 


which  the  individual  may  discover  virtue  independently  of 
revelation  or  authority,  and  so  be  justified,  if  needs  be,  in 
taking  a  stand  against  both  religion  and  the  state. 

2.  Utilitarianism.  Right  and  wrong  being  accepted  as 
objective  verities,  they  must  either  remain  as  axiomatic  and 
irreducible,  or  they  must  be  understood  in  the  Ught  of  some 
good  to  which  they  conduce.  We  may  construe  utilitarian- 
ism in  the  broad  sense  to  mean  that  right  conduct  is  the 
means  to  human  happiness.  This  view  appears  even  among 
the  most  conservative  and  rationalistic  of  the  British  moral- 
ists; and  even  among  the  theological  moralists,  who  insist 
that  if  the  will  of  God  is  to  be  accepted  as  morally  authorita- 
tive, it  must  be  because  God  is  somehow  pledged  to  secure 
the  happiness  of  mankind.  But  this  tendency  tends  to 
divorce  itself  both  from  rationalism  and  from  theology,  and 
to  assume  an  experimental  and  secular  form.  Human  happi- 
ness must  depend  upon  human  needs  and  inclinations.  If 
a  man  wants  pleasure,  then  his  happiness  must  consist  in  the 
getting  of  it.  If  he  has  various  impulses,  some  self-seeking 
and  some  social,  then  his  happiness  must  consist  in  getting 
these  impulses  satisfied.  Morality  then  becomes  a  method 
or  art,  by  which  conduct  is  adjusted  to  human  nature,  and 
in  which  right  action  is  judged  by  its  effects.  The  final 
appeal  must  be  to  the  individual's  desires,  which  he  himself 
understands  better  than  any,  even  the  most  indulgent  and 
well-meaning,  authority.  If  this  be  the  substance  of  utili- 
tarianism, then,  as  we  have  seen,  it  in  no  way  conflicts  with 
the  acknowledgment  of  any  higher  aspirations  that  a  man 
may  feel,  provided  he  actually  feels  them;  or  with  an  em- 
phasis on  the  common  social  life  provided  this  is  grounded  in 
the  dispositions  and  sentiments  of  individuals.  It  is  opposed 
only  to  the  imputing  to  men  of  ends  that  they  do  not  actually 
seek,  or  to  the  invention  of  fictitious  entities  like  the  state- 
personality,  which  are  argued  from  metaphysics.  UtiU- 
tarianism  in  this  sense  means  only  that  the  good  shall  be 
judged  to  consist  in  the  getting  and  having  of  what  actual 
sentient  creatures  actually  and  sentiently  desire. 


494 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


3.  Self-realization.  With  the  advent  of  German  idealism 
there  appeared  the  new  formula  of  ''self-realization.''  In  so 
far  as  this  tends  to  an  overriding  of  the  individual  human  self 
in  the  name  of  a  higher  social  or  absolute  self,  it  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  contrary  to  both  the  teachings  we  have  just  examined. 
If  reahzing  one's  self  means  losing  one's  individual  self,  or 
disowning  it,  then  one  cannot  expect  this  doctrine  to  find 
a  permanent  lodgment  in  the  British  mind.  But  there  is 
room  for  its  quaHfied  acceptance.  If  self-realization  means 
that  the  desires  of  selves  are  the  source  and  criterion  of  all 
value,  then  this  doctrine  is  in  keeping  with  utiHtarianism. 
Or  if  it  means  that  a  man  shall  act  on  his  own  moral  judgment 
or  from  his  own  conscience,  then  it  is  in  keeping  with  the 
British  cult  of  moral  self-reHance.  In  spite  of  all  that  was 
alien  to  the  British  tradition  and  habit  of  mind,  Carlyle  made 
an  appeal  that  could  nowhere  count  upon  a  more  certain 
response  than  in  his  own  country.  For  he  urged  men  to  be 
personally  invincible,  and  to  dare  to  match  their  moral 
convictions  against  the  threat  of  power  or  the  seductions  of 
corrupting  indulgence. 

4.  Political  Applications.  There  are  two  political  corol- 
laries with  which  I  propose  to  conclude  this  brief  survey. 

In  the  first  place,  the  Britisher  proposes  to  use  the  state, 
and  not  be  used  by  it.  He  values  it,  but  he  does  not  worship 
it.  His  fear  that  the  state  might  take  things  into  its  own 
hands  or  become  an  object  of  superstitious  veneration,  has 
led  him  to  undervalue  it  and  to  reduce  its  functions  to  a 
minimum.  He  tolerates  his  House  of  Lords  and  his  heredi- 
tary monarchy,  because  he  dislikes  abrupt  changes  and  is 
fond  of  the  traditional  and  familiar.  But  he  sees  to  it  that 
hereditary  privileges  are  not  abused,  and  knows  shrewdly 
how  to  unite  titles  with  impotence.  The  Empire  has  proved 
a  more  tempting  object  of  idolatry  than  the  Kingdom;  and 
there  have  been  British  thinkers  such  as  Froude,  Mommsen 
and  even  Carlyle,  who  have  made  a  cult  of  the  Empire  and 
even  sought  to  justify  unscrupulousness  by  glory.  But  these 
counsels  have  not  seriously  counted.  The  Empire  like  the 
Kingdom  has  been  built  on  utility,  as  providing  protection 


BRITISH  THOUGHT 


49S 


for  trade  and  security  for  colonial  emigrants.  Its  organiza- 
tion has  been  elastic  and  adaptable;  and  it  stands  to-day  as 
a  monumental  proof  of  the  possibihty  of  reconciling  local 
autonomy  and  local  interests  with  a  trans-oceanic  and  inter- 
continental co-operation  and  moral  unity. 

In  the  second  place,  British  foreign  poHcy  has  to  a  con- 
stantly increasing  degree  reflected  the  standards  of  domestic 
moraUty.  Its  weakness  and  irresolution,  as  well  as  its 
greatest  triumphs,  have  been  due  to  this  cause.  Great 
Britain  does  not  permit  itself  the  short  cuts  of  bold  and 
unscrupulous  aggrandizement.  The  builders  of  the  Empire 
abroad  have  had  to  come  to  terms  with  the  ''little  Eng- 
enders" at  home.  These  ''little  Englanders,"  it  will  be 
remembered,  spoke  with  open  courage  and  with  effect  as 
long  ago  as  the  American  War  of  Independence,  when  they 
befriended  the  cause  of  liberty  against  claims  of  imperial 
dominion.  They  were  unable  to  prevent  the  subjugation  of 
the  Boers,  but  they  were  strong  enough  to  secure  them  that 
self-government  which  has  converted  them  to  loyal  alle- 
giance. If  they  have  been  less  successful  in  solving  the  prob- 
lem of  Irish  autonomy,  it  is  not  for  lack  of  good  will.  ^  This 
problem  is  gravely  complicated  by  sharp  racial,  economic  and 
religious  differences  in  Ireland  herself,  by  propinquity,  and 
now  by  the  great  emergency  of  a  war  for  national  existence. 
History  affords  no  parallel  to  the  patience,  good-temper  and 
consistently  liberal  interest  with  which  successive  British 
governments  have  attempted  to  redress  wrongs  inherited 
from  an  age  that  is  past.  If  we  condemn  British  policy,  it 
is  because  we  are  encouraged  to  expect  so  much  from  it; 
because  we  have  been  taught  by  British  thinkers  and  British 
statesmen  to  insist  that  governments  shall  be  as  scrupulous 
as  individuals.  As  a  recent  English  writer  has  said:  "The 
collective  will  of  the  mass  of  Christian  citizens  demands  that 
their  representatives  shall  act  with  the  same  fairness  and 
firmness  which  anyone  of  them  would  show  in  his  dealing  on 
behalf  of  private  friends."  ^ 

1  M.  G.  Glazebrook,  "What  is  a  Christian  Nation?"  in  The  Faith  and  the 
War,  p.  231. 


496 


THE  PRESENT   CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


No  state  on  earth  is  guiltless  if  judged  by  such  standards. 
But  what,  then,  shall  we  conclude?  The  German,  judging 
by  history,  accepts  the  unscrupulousness  of  states  as  a  final- 
ity, and  proposes  to  persist  in  it.  The  rest  olthe  world  is 
possessed  with  the  idea  of  doing  better,  and  in  this  new 
resolution  is  largely  sustained  by  the  healthy  moral  instinct 
which  prompts  the  Anglo-Saxon  to  call  things  by  their  right 
names  even  when  they  come  from  on  high. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 
THE  AMERICAN  IDEAL   OF   SOCIAL  EQUALITY  * 

Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  opens  a  recent  article  with  the 
following  paragraph: 

t  *'The  war  of  Nations  is  being  entangled  with,  is  merging  into,  the 
war  of  Class:  about  sovereignty,  ranks,  upper  and  lower  Orders; 
but  essentially,  between  those  who  hold  Capital  and  those  who 
Work  with  their  hands.  National  wars,  as  we  see,  unite  men  in 
nations:  Class  wars  suppress  the  spirit  of  nationality,  for  they 
herald  what  Socialists  promise  as  the  grander  form  of  Patriotism, 
the  brotherhood  of  laborers.  At  the  opening  of  the  great  European 
War  Democracy  was  appealed  to,  and  nobly  it  answered  the  call  in 
the  name  of  the  Nation.  But  now,  in  this  fourth  year  of  war,  we 
see  all  over  Europe  how  democratic  patriotism  is  expanding  into 
the  new  Industrial  Order  which  dreamers  for  two  generations  have 
imagined  as  the  Social  Revolution."  ^ 

Whether  we  applaud  or  regret  the  change  which  Mr. 
Harrison  describes,  we  cannot  well  dispute  the  fact.  His 
account  may  be  exaggerated,  but  beyond  doubt  the  war, 
after  its  initial  effect  of  solidifying  nationalities,  has  come 
more  and  more  to  heighten  class  consciousness  and  inter- 
national fellow-feeling.  The  immensity  of  the  war  lies  not 
only  in  its  area  and  volume,  but  in  the  profoundness  and 
complexity  of  its  issues.  It  is  not  a  mere  struggle  for  power 
among  rival  nations,  but  a  struggle  for  ascendancy  among 
rival  forms  of  government,  economic  policies  and  social 
philosophies.  The  outcome  is  going  to  determine  not  merely 
what  nations  shall  survive,  but  what  institutions  and  ideals 
shall  survive.  It  is  not  merely  a  question  of  who  shall  prove 
strongest,  but  of  what  form  of  life  shall  prove  strongest. 

*  This  chapter  is  reprinted  with  slight  changes  from  The  International 
Journal  of  Ethics,  July,  1918,  where  it  appears  under  the  title  "What  Do  We 
Mean  by  Democracy?" 

*  "Obiter  Scripta,"  Fortnightly  Review,  January,  1918. 

497 


498 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Thu5  we,  the  people  of  the  United  States,  are  not  fighting 
merely  in  order  that  we  may  continue  to  exist ;  though  this 
is  a  very  genuine  and  very  proper  motive.  We  are  also 
fighting  in  order  that  we  may  exist  in  a  certain  specific  way; 
or  in  order  that  a  certain  specific  form  of  Ufe  may  through  us 
retain  a  place  in  the  world.  We  usually  call  this  specific 
form  of  Hfe  by  the  name  of  ''democracy."  If  we  are  to  be 
taken  at  our  word,  then,  we  not  only  intend  to  exist,  and  to 
exist  with  undiminished  strength ;  but  we  intend  also  to  be 
democratic,  and  to  be  more  fully  and  more  consistently 
democratic  than  we  have  as  yet  grown  to  be.  We  have 
repeatedly  professed  this  creed  on  many  solemn  and  public 
occasions.  Do  we  really  mean  it?  And  if  so,  what  do  we 
mean  by  it? 

If  the  average  man  were  honestly  to  express  his  mind  on 
democracy  he  would  say,  adapting  Audrey's  words  to 
Touchstone,  ''I  do  not  know  what  democratic  is.  Is  it 
honest  in  word  and  deed?  Is  it  a  true  thing?  "  Of  course, 
living  in  this  time  and  place,  he  would  be  prejudiced  in  its 
favor.  Democracy  is  a  word  to  conjure  with;  and  its 
meaning  is  so  dim  and  so  equivocal  that  almost  anybody 
can  conjure  with  it.  Recent  events  have  increased  its  vogue, 
but  have  at  the  same  time  led  many  persons  to  ask  questions 
about  it.  Since  its  credentials  are  not  clear,  some  sceptically 
minded  persons  are  inclined  to  reject  it  as  a  superstition; 
while  credulous  persons,  on  the  other  hand,  are  inclined  to 
cling  to  it  all  the  more  tenaciously  by  an  act  of  bUnd  faith. 
Many  reject  or  accept  it  on  account  of  what  is  supposed  to  be 
implied  by  it.  Thus  in  so  far  as  woman  suffrage  or  the 
initiative  and  referendum  are  said  to  be  democratic  those 
who  object  to  these  policies  are  beginning  to  say  that  they 
never  really  believed  in  democracy  anyway;  while  others 
are  confirmed  in  their  democracy  from  hope  of  the  greater 
pohtical  power  that  is  promised  in  its  name.  But  precisely 
what  is  implied  by  democracy  is  so  doubtful  that  both  the 
advocates  and  the  opponents  of  compulsory  military  service 
have  made  it  the  fundamental  premise  of  their  arguments. 
Inasmuch  as  we  are  at  present  more  than  ever   disposed 


THE  AMERICAN  IDEAL  OF   SOCIAL  EQUALITY         499 

to  derive  our  policies  from  it,  democracy  should  be  more 
than  a  symbol  like  the  flag  or  national  anthem.     It  should 
have  so  far    as   possible    an    articulate    meaning,    and    a 
meaning  widely  recognized  and  consciously  adopted  by  all 
in  whose  decision  the  choice  of  poHcy  Hes. 
^^  There  are  two  broadly  different  senses  in  which  the  term 
'^democracy''  is  used.     On  the  one  hand,  it  refers  to  social 
equahty  as  a  desirable  form  of  Hfe;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
refers  to  popular  government  as  the  only  just  and  efficient 
form  of  pohtical  organization.     In  the  present  chapter  we 
shall  deal  with  democracy  in  the  first  of  these  two  senses 
We  shall  disregard  the  pohtical  axiom  that  men  are  born  with 
equal  rights;    or  the  pohtical  precept  that  men  should  be 
accorded  an  equal  share  of  sovereignty.     We  shall  confine 
ourselves  to  the  prior  question  whether  it  is  good  that  the 
lot  of  men  should  so  far  as  possible  be  equahzed.     Equahty 
m  this  sense  is  a  potent  symbol,  an  emotional  explosive, 
indispensable  to  the  arsenal  of  any  poet  or  orator  who  wishes 
to  inflame  an  audience.     Like  every  symbol  it  is  somewhere 
connected  with  the  hving  interests  and  sentiments  of  men. 
What,   then,   are  the  values  that  "equahty"  represents? 
When  men  applaud  it,  what  good  thing  does  it  signify  to 
them,  that  it  should  so  warm  their  hearts?     To  what  motives 
does  it  appeal? 

I.    THE   MOTIVE   OF   COMPASSION 

Equahty  is  rooted,  first,  in  the  motive  of  compassion. 
This  motive,  instinctive  and  inahenable,  but  pecuharly 
cultivated,  intensified  and  extended  by  Christianity,  prompts 
men^  to  reheve  the  manifest  distress  of  their  feUows.  Com- 
passion is  felt  for  individuals.  Compassion  is  excited  by  the 
aspect  which  life  presents  at  the  lower  end  of  the  scale  of 
happiness.  On  the  one  hand,  then,  it  regards  Hfe  concretely 
as  an  aggregate  of  suffering,  struggHng,  hoping  men  and 
women;  with  the  result  that  it  tends  to  the  comparative 
neglect  of  institutions,  laws  and  general  principles.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  essentiaUy  remedial  rather  than  construc- 
tive.   It  applies  itself  to  raising  the  minimum  rather  than 


500 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


the  maximum.  It  halts  the  vanguard  of  civilization  in  order 
that  those  who  are  dropping  by  the  way  or  lagging  in  the 
rear  may  be  brought  abreast  of  the  marching  column.  It  is 
less  interested  in  the  perfection  of  the  few,  who  demonstrate 
the  heights  to  which  human  nature  can  attain  under  the 
most  favorable  conditions;  it  is  more  interested  in  providing 
the  unfortunate  man  with  the  staple  goods  of  health,  food 
and  protection.  It  is  distributive  and  extensive  in  its  effect, 
rather  than  quahtative  and  intensive.  It  is,  then,  clearly 
an  equalizing  motive. 

It  is  this  motive  which  is  stronger  in  women  than  in  men; 
which  is  just  now  more  alive  to  the  suffering  of  individual 
soldiers  and  civiUans  than  to  the  larger  issues  of  the  war; 
which  dwells  upon  famine,  pestilence  and  cruelty,  and  is 
liable  to  ignore  questions  of  poHtical  or  economic  policy. 
The  range  and  effect  of  this  motive  have  been  enormously 
extended  by  the  recent  increase  of  intercommunication 
between  classes,  nations,  continents  and  hemispheres.  The 
feeUng  for  all  mankind  as  a  vast  aggregate  of  suffering  in- 
dividuals is  no  longer  a  vague  and  pious  sentiment,  but  a 
powerful  spring  of  action  which  must  be  reckoned  with  as  a 
force  in  human  affairs.  It  is  the  link  between  democracy 
and  humanity. 

The  motive  of  compassion  does,  it  is  true,  tend  to  the 
comparative  neglect  of  the  broader  considerations  of  policy, 
and  to  the  comparative  neglect  of  the  arts  and  sciences.  In 
so  far  as  this  is  the  case  it  is  open  to  criticism,  and  even 
defeats  itself.  Nevertheless  it  is  essentially  sound:  not  to 
be  rejected,  but  to  be  supplemented  and  corrected.  The 
essential  truth  which  it  bespeaks  is  this:  that  in  the  last 
analysis  the  units  of  life  are  individual,  sentient  beings. 
The  merit  of  any  social  system  is  to  be  judged  by  the  happi- 
ness which  it  creates.  And  a  social  system  may  as  fairly  be 
judged  by  the  lot  of  men  at  the  bottom  as  by  the  lot  of  men 
at  the  top.  It  is  comparatively  easy  to  devise  a  system  that 
shall  make  some  men  happy,  provided  the  majority  may  be 
sacrificed  for  the  purpose.  The  great  task  of  civiUzation  is 
to  achieve  a  happiness  that  may  be  generally  shared,  by 


THE   AMERICAN  IDEAL  OF  SOCIAL  EQUALITY         50I 

which  the  good  of  one  man  shall  also  enhance  the  good  of 
another.  Until  this  is  achieved  civilization  may  fairly  be 
regarded  as  on  trial.  So  far,  then,  the  idea  of  equality  means 
this  community  and  mutuality  of  life,  in  which  all  men  shall 
achieve  happiness  and  perfection  together  at  a  pace  which 
requires  neither  the  abandonment  nor  the  exploitation  of 
the  unfortunate. 


II.    THE  MOTIVE   OF  EMULATION 

The  second  motive  of  equality  is  emulation.  Men  desire 
to  overtake  or  surpass  their  fellows  in  the  race  of  life.  Every 
activity  of  life  —  art,  science  and  public  service,  as  well  as 
money-getting,  politics  and  ^'society" — matches  one  man 
against  others,  and  distributes  the  competitors  who  are 
entered  in  a  scale  of  comparative  failure  and  success.  The 
same  motive  of  emulation  which  prompts  a  man  to  exceed 
the  attainment  of  others  makes  him  resent  another's  victory 
when  it  is  not  earned.  Emulation  begets  the  demand  for 
fair-play,  or  for  a  *^  square  deal.''  The  race  must  be  to  the 
swift,  not  to  those  who  from  the  start  find  themselves  already 
at  or  near  the  goal  through  no  efforts  of  their  own,  or  to  those 
who  are  assisted  from  the  side-lines.  The  man  who  wins 
despite  initial  disadvantages,  the  "self-made  man,"  is 
doubly  honored ;  but  such  initial  disadvantages  are  none  the 
less  regarded  as  contrary  to  the  code  of  sportsmanship.  All 
competitors  must  be  given  an  even  start;  or,  as  we  say, 
opportunity  must  be  equalized.  A  social  hierarchy,  in  which 
the  accident  of  birth  or  "connection"  rigidly  distinguishes 
the  fortunate  from  the  unfortunate,  must,  according  to  this 
code,  give  place  to  a  more  flexible  system  of  interchangeable 
stations,  in  which  success  shall  be  determined  by  talent  and 
energy. 

That  this  motive  has  powerfully  affected  modern  social 
reconstruction,  no  one  can  deny.  "Every  great  social  and 
economical  change  in  modern  Europe,"  says  Mr.  Cliffe 
LesHe,  "has  helped  to  clear  the  passage  through  the  crowd, 
and  through  the  world,  for  the  humblest  man  with  any  real 


502 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


individuality."  ^  The  enormous  extension  in  modern  times 
of  the  opportunity  for  eminence  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that 
from  the  arrival  of  the  Saxons  in  Britain  to  the  accession  of 
Edward  III,  only  seven  great  names  are  recorded  in  English 
history,  Alfred,  William  the  Conqueror,  Henry  II,  Edward  I, 
Anselm,  Becket  and  Roger  Bacon,  of  whom  four  were  kings 
and  two  were  priests.  The  history  of  Europe  was  once  a 
record  of  lost  opportunity;  it  is  now  a  record  of  rise  from 
obscurity.  The  extension  of  facilities  for  education,  the 
increase  of  inter-communication,  the  abolition  of  special 
privilege,  the  wider  and  more  equal  distribution  of  wealth,  — ■ 
these  are  some  of  the  means  by  which  this  change  has  come 
about  and  is  being  accelerated.  No  one,  I  think,  would 
propose  to  retard  this  change.  Not  only  does  it  enrich  the 
collective  life  by  utilizing  talents  which  would  otherwise 
remain  buried  under  superficial  strata  of  mediocrity;  but  it 
is  sound  in  principle,  since  it  requires  that  every  form  of 
organized  restraint  shall  have  a  Hberal  and  provident  intent. 

A  friend  of  mine  has  recently  made  a  practice  of  asking  the 
foreign-born  Americans  of  his  acquaintance  what  motive 
prompted  them  to  come  to  this  country.  With  very  few 
exceptions  they  have  answered  that  it  was  because  they 
could  **get  on''  here;  meaning  that  they  could  not  only 
make  a  living,  but  always  enjoyed  at  least  the  chance  of 
prosperity  and  wealth.  The  fact  that  extreme  revolutionary 
propaganda  has  made  so  little  headway  in  this  country,  that 
labor  as  a  class  has  not  usually  found  it  necessary  to  form  a 
distinct  political  party,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  working 
classes  do  find  a  genuine  opportunity  in  the  existing  system. 
They  are  as  a  whole  successful  and  hopeful.  They  do  not 
feel  an  irreconcilable  bitterness  toward  the  bourgeoisie,  be- 
cause, as  my  friend  has  expressed  it,  the  more  energetic  and 
intelligent  among  them  hope  some  day  to  belong  to  the 
bourgeoisie  themselves.  They  hesitate  to  destroy  a  station 
in  life  which  they  think  they  may  some  day  themselves 
occupy. 

But  this  represents  the  attitude  of  skilled  rather  than  of 

^  Essays  in  Economic  and  Moral  Philosophy. 


THE  AMERICAN  IDEAL  OF  SOCIAL  EQUALITY         503 

unskilled  labor;  and  latterly  with  the  larger  immigration 
from  southern  Europe  and  the  rapid  growth  of  centralized 
industries,  it  has  become  less  and  less  universal.  Even  if 
this  were  not  so,  we  must  recognize  the  fact  that  those  who 
enjoy  a  chance  of  success  are  going  to  insist  upon  increasing 
that  chance.  Prosperity  does  not  always  beget  contentment. 
It  also  increases  ambition  and  sense  of  power.  It  was  once 
customary  to  compare  the  relatively  great  opportunity 
afforded  by  American  life  with  the  relatively  meagre  oppor- 
tunity afforded  by  life  at  home,  in  ''  the  c4d  country.''  But 
it  is  now  customary  to  demand  more,  and  to  judge  oppor- 
tunity by  the  standard  of  the  more  fortunate  rather  than  by 
the  standard  of  the  less  fortunate.  We  may  reasonably 
expect  that  no  man  in  the  long  run  is  going  to  be  satisfied 
with  anything  short  of  the  fullest  opportunity  that  appears 
consistent  with  maintaining  the  total  productivity  and 
wealth  of  the  country. 

There  is  a  significant  phrase  in  the  report  of  a  committee 
recently  appointed  by  the  British  Labor  Party  to  formulate 
a  program  of  reconstruction  after  the  war.  I  refer  to  the 
phrase  ''effective  personal  freedom."  This  means  freedom 
that  can  actually  be  used  to  advantage.  It  imphes  that  the 
opportunity  which  is  wanted  must  be  a  positive  and  liberal 
opportunity,  which  is  not  to  be  obtained  by  merely  letting 
things  alone  but  only  by  contriving  a  more  favorable  situa- 
tion than  that  in  which  the  working  man  now  finds  himself. 
If  you  drive  a  man  up  a  tree  and  station  a  bear  at  the  foot  of 
it,  it  does  not  gratify  him  to  be  told  that  he  is  now  free  to  do 
as  he  chooses.  If  you  dismiss  your  son  from  your  door 
without  food,  money  or  education,  and  tell  him  that  the 
whole  wide  world  is  now  open  to  him,  you  have  not  given 
him  ''effective  personal  freedom."  Circumstances  may 
compel  him  to  accept  your  terms,  hard  and  dictatorial  though 
they  may  be.    Freedom  in  such  a  sense  is  a  threat  and  not 

a  promise. 

Similarly  if  you  rear  a  man  in  a  low  social  station,  in  the 
midst  of  poverty  and  ignorance,  with  the  necessity  of  liveli- 
hood forced  upon  him  from  an  early  age,  and  then  tell  him 


504 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


that  he  may  rise  even  to  be  President  of  the  United  States, 
he  is  to  be  forgiven  if  he  does  not  appear  enthusiastic  and 
grateful.  If  you  throw  a  man  into  stormy  waters  far  from 
land,  and  then  tell  him  that  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  his 
swimming  to  shore  and  making  a  nice  dry  warm  place  for 
himself  there,  you  do  not  confer  a  boon  on  him.  For  first  he 
has  got  to  keep  his  head  above  water.  Even  if  by  great  and 
prolonged  exertions  he  can  do  that,  there  is  little  chance  of 
his  living  to  achieve  more.  The  man  who  demands  "effec- 
tive personal  freedom"  wants  to  be  put  on  shore  to  start 
with.  He  understands  that  there  is  a  tyranny  of  circum- 
stance more  fatal  than  that  of  man;  that  the  worst  of  all 
tyrannies  is  the  tyranny  of  existing  things,  of  that  estab- 
lished system  which  has  grown  out  of  human  action,  but  for 
which  no  human  individual  now  feels  responsible.  From 
men  and  institutions  he  demands  more  than  passive  per- 
mission to  do  what  he  can  for  himself.  He  knows  that  for 
him  the  chance  of  success  is  an  off-chance.  He  demands 
that  men  and  institutions  shall  annul  the  tyranny  of  circum- 
stance, and  reconstruct  the  existing  system  so  that  the  rich- 
ness of  his  opportunity  shall  be  somewhere  nearly  commen- 
surate with  his  capacity  and  interests. 

We  must  not  deceive  ourselves  by  giving  the  name  of 
opportunity  to  mere  neglect.  More  often  than  not,  equal 
opportunity  has  to  be  created  by  actively  intervening  against 
established  injustice.  And  we  must  remember  that  for  all 
alike  to  have  some  chance  of  the  highest  success  does  not  at 
all  imply  that  they  have  a  like  chance  even  of  the  smallest 
success.  There  is  all  the  practical  difference  in  the  world 
between  a  fair  chance  and  an  off-chance. 

m.    THE  MOTIVE  OF  SELF-RESPECT 

A  third  motive  to  equality  is  self-respect^  or  the  resentment 
of  arrogance.  No  high-spirited  man  can  tolerate  contempt. 
In  proportion  as  a  man  is  conscious  of  his  natural  powers  and 
is  ambitious  to  excel  he  must  inevitably  believe  in  himself 
and  retahate  upon  those  who  habitually  treat  him  as  an  in- 
ferior.   This  is  a  different  thing,  as  we  shall  see,  from  the 


THE  AMERICAN  IDEAL  OF   SOCIAL  EQUALITY         50$ 

dislike  of  superiority.  It  is  dislike  of  conscious  superiority, 
or  of  the  airs  of  superiority:  because,  in  the  first  place  these 
aggravate  accidental  advantages  and  ignore  merit;  because, 
in  the  second  place,  they  imply  an  attitude  of  disparagement 
toward  oneself  and  force  one  to  self-defense. 

But  ''disUke"  is  too  weak  a  word.  Humiliation  begets 
the  most  implacable  hatred.  The  sting  of  humiUation  was 
one  of  the  most  powerful  motives  of  the  French  Revolution. 
Monsters  of  cruelty,  such  as  Marat  and  Carrier,  were  seeking 
balm  for  the  incurable  wounds  inflicted  upon  their  self-love 
when  they  were  despised  subordinates  in  the  establishments 
of  great  nobles.  Even  Mme.  Roland,  as  Le  Bon  says,  ''was 
never  able  to  forget  that  when  she  and  her  mother  were 
invited  to  the  house  of  a  great  lady  under  the  ancien  regime 
they  had  been  sent  to  dine  in  the  servants'  quarters.''  The 
same  author  points  out  that  it  was  not  those  who  had  the 
most  soUd  grievances  who  led  the  Revolution,  but  the  bour- 
geoisie, who  despite  their  wealth  or  professional  success,  were 
contemptuously  snubbed  by  the  aristocracy.  In  a  measure, 
then,  Napoleon  was  justified  when  he  said:  ''Vanity  made 
the  Revolution;  liberty  was  only  the  pretext." 

But  this  explanation  ignores  the  deeper  aspect  of  the 
motive.  Vanity  is  accidental  and  temperamental.  The 
main-spring  of  revolt  was  not  vanity,  but  the  self-confidence 
and  self-respect  which  must  necessarily  accompany  attain- 
ment. A  man  who  succeeds,  or  even  aspires  to  succeed,  must 
beUeve  in  himself.  A  democracy  of  opportunity  must  be  at 
the  same  time  a  democracy  of  personal  esteem.  In  a  society 
which  enables  the  majority  of  its  members  to  taste  success, 
or  to  dream  of  it,  the  sentiments  of  pride,  honor  and  dignity 
will  be  widely  disseminated.  They  can  no  longer  be  re- 
garded as  the  exclusive  prerogatives  of  a  social  caste.  This 
fact  is  as  pertinent  to-day  as  ever.  If  a  fashionable  class,  an 
employer  class,  a  "respectable"  class,  a  "high-brow"  class, 
a  Bostonian  clan  or  a  white  race  feel  themselves  to  be 
superior,  that  feeling  will  infallibly  be  scented,  and  will 
arouse  a  resentful  and  rebellious  spirit  among  those  who  have 
become  conscious  of  their  own  worth.     There  is  no  escape 


So6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


from  this  dilemma.  Either  the  masses  of  mankind  must  be 
broken  in  spirit,  and  convinced  by  subjection  of  the  utter 
helplessness  of  their  lot;  or,  if  they  are  once  allowed  to  travel 
on  the  highroad  to  success,  their  pride  must  be  respected.  A 
man  cannot  be  given  opportunity  without  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  his  worth. 

IV.    THE  MOTIVE   OF  FRATERNITY 

A  further  motive  to  equality  is  to  be  found  in  the  senti- 
ment of  fraternity.  This  is  a  feehng  or  attitude  which 
naturally  develops  among  men  who  recognize  their  common 
lot.  It  develops  among  lost  souls  who  seek  a  common  sal- 
vation, among  fellow-adventurers  who  suffer  common  hard- 
ships, among  competitors  who  acknowledge  the  same  stand- 
ard of  success  or  among  partners  who  feel  their  mutual 
dependence.  It  is  the  converse  of  the  motive  which  we  have 
just  considered.  Self-respect  demands  the  esteem  of  others 
and  resents  disparagement.  Fraternity  acknowledges  the 
just  pride  of  others,  or  accords  that  which  self-respect 
demands.  It  is  the  only  possible  relation  between  two 
self-respecting  persons.  It  does  not  imply  intimacy  or 
friendship,  for  these  must  depend  upon  the  accidents  of 
propinquity  and  temperament;  but  it  implies  courtesy,  fair- 
mindedness  and  the  admission  of  one's  own  limitations. 
It  must  underly  the  closer  relations  of  family,  neighborhood 
or  vocation;  but  it  must  be  extended  to  the  broader  and  less 
personal  relations  of  fellow-citizenship  and  fellow-humanity. 
It  is  the  essential  spirit  of  that  finer  companionship  which 
even  kings  have  coveted;  but  in  a  diffused  and  rarified 
form  it  is  the  atmosphere  which  is  vital  to  a  democratic 
community. 

It  is  the  motive  of  fraternity  which  justifies  that  freedom 
of  manners  which  we  properly  associate  with  a  democracy. 
A  fraternal  democracy  does  not  fail  to  acknowledge  supe- 
riority; indeed  democracies  are  proverbially  given  to  an 
extravagance  of  hero-worship.  But  they  do  not  like  to  have 
superiority  too  conscious  of  itself.  They  do  not  like  to  have 
superiority    converted    into    an    institution.     Hence    they 


THE  AMERICAN  IDEAL  OF   SOCIAL  EQUALITY         507 


attack  every  form  of  class-stratification  and  are  suspicious 
of  titles  and  decorations.  The  great  man  is  always  on  trial 
and  can  never  settle  comfortably  and  permanently  into  the 
exalted  position  to  which  success  and  popular  applause  may 
have  raised  him.  Furthermore  his  success  is  never  confused 
with  his  person  and  is  not  recognized  as  an  essential  at- 
tribute. As  a  statesman,  or  captain  of  industry,  or  general 
or  admiral  he  may  have  achieved  glory  and  distinction,  but 
as  a  man  he  still  ranks  with  his  fellows. 

When  once  this  fraternal  spirit  is  strong  and  widely  diffused 
it  has  effective  ways  of  protecting  itself.  In  a  thoroughly 
democratic  community  arrogance  is  not  angrily  denounced; 
it  is  blighted  and  withered  before  it  has  a  chance  to  mature. 
If  anyone  were  to  set  himself  up  in  this  country  as  a  wirk- 
licher  Hofgeheimrat,  as  a  genuine  court  privy  counsellor, 
after  a  fashion  popular  in  Central  Europe,  he  would  not  be 
execrated  and  mobbed.  He  would  get  no  notice  at  all  ex- 
cept in  the  funny  columns  of  the  newspapers.  And  he  would 
soon  learn  to  take  the  same  attitude  himself.  The  fact  is 
that  it  is  pretty  hard  to  feel  personally  superior,  if  nobody 
agrees  with  you;  or  to  look  down  on  people,  if  you  can't  get 
anybody  to  look  up  to  you.  Those  who  care  greatly  for  the 
external  expression  and  recognition  of  superiority  do  not  be- 
long in  a  democratic  society.  There  is  a  place  where  they 
will  feel  quite  at  home.  Only  those  will  be  happy  in  a 
democracy  who  prefer  to  be  greeted  neither  by  the  upward 
slant  of  obsequiousness  nor  by  the  downward  slant  of  con- 
descensi'on,  but  by  the  horizontal  glance  of  fraternal  self- 
respect. 

v.    THE   MOTIVE   OF  ENVY 

Finally,  we  must  recognize  the  motive  of  envy.  This 
motive  prompts  men  to  dislike,  not  the  consciousness  of 
superiority  but  the  substance  of  superiority.  It  is  doubly 
vicious.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  negative  and  destructive. 
The  motive  of  emulation  prompts  men  to  exert  themselves, 
and  to  resent  only  that  which  prevents  their  earning  their 
deserts.    Envy  on  the  other  hand  prompts  men  to  retard 


5o8 


THE  PRESENT   CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


those  who  excel  them;  or  to  visit  upon  others  those  very  dis- 
abihties  which  emulation  seeks  to  escape.  Envy  is  malicious. 
It  derives  satisfaction  from  defeat  and  failure.  Whereas 
emulation  seeks  equality  by  clearing  the  course  and  speeding 
up  the  race,  envy  seeks  equahty  by  slackening  the  pace  and 
impeding  the  leaders.  A  true  sportsman  does  not  resent 
being  fairly  beaten,  and  admires  those  who  achieve  the  suc- 
cess to  which  he  aspires.  He  devotes  himself  to  a  cult  of 
merit  and  aims  to  exalt  the  record  of  attainment  by  re- 
moving every  artificial  hindrance.  But  the  envious  man 
would  rather  win  unfairly  in  a  slow  race  than  be  surpassed 
by  his  fellows  in  a  swift. 

The  equality  which  emulation  seeks  is  a  levelling  up;  while 
that  which  envy  seeks  is  a  levelling  down.  Instead  of  seek- 
ing to  rise,  it  seeks  to  destroy  what  is  above.  A  wounded 
Russian  sailor  in  a  hospital  in  Helsingfors  was  asked  by  one 
of  the  surgeons  why  he  sought  to  kill  his  officers,  when  by  his 
own  admission  he  admired  and  even  loved  them.  He  replied : 
''Otherwise  we  shall  never  be  on  the  same  level.  They  may 
be  ever  so  good  and  kind,  but  owing  to  their  better  education 
they  are  different  from  us.     They  must  die  to  make  us  level. "^ 

In  the  second  place,  envy  gives  rise  to  a  cult  of  vulgarity. 
In  so  far  as  this  motive  is  widespread  and  powerful,  it  leads 
to  a  pretence  of  mediocrity  for  the  sake  of  conciliating 
opinion.  Men  cultivate  a  sham  colloquialism  of  speech  or 
roughness  of  manners;  they  hide  their  knowledge  or  their 
wealth  or  their  power  behind  an  affectation  of  inferiority. 
But  dissimulation  and  dishonesty  is  not  the  worst  of  it.  It 
discourages  every  sort  of  eminence,  and  robs  society  of  the 
services  of  the  expert  and  the  leader.  It  confuses  and  de- 
presses all  standards  of  excellence.  And  it  confirms  the  in- 
feriority of  the  inferior,  removing  the  incentive  to  excel,  and 
teaching  him  to  be  proud  of  that  failure  which  should  fill 
him  with  discontent  and  shame. 

TLere  is  a  good  deal  of  this  envious  democracy  abroad  in 
our  land  to-day.  There  is  a  dislike  of ''  experts,"  a  prejudice 
to  which  our  demagogues  have  so  effectually  appealed.     In 

1  Reported  in  the  New  York  Tribune ,  in  April,  1918. 


THE  AMERICAN  IDEAL  OF   SOCIAL  EQUALITY         509 

education  we  like  to  have  everything  made  easy.  We  don't 
want  to  learn,  we  want  to  be  taught;  we  don't  want  to  find 
out,  we  prefer  to  be  shown.  In  this,  and  in  other  fields  of 
activity,  instead  of  climbing  the  ladder  we  sit  comfortably 
at  the  foot  and  wait  for  an  elevator.  If  the  higher  things 
don't  come  easily,  and  they  rarely  do,  then  we  behttle  them; 
while  for  the  same  reason  we  over-rate  the  shallow  and  com- 
mon-place attainment  on  which  we  can  .safely  count. 

Now  a  democracy  of  classes  and  persons  is  something  to 
aspire  to,  but  a  democracy  of  values  is  corruption  and  non- 
sense. The  best  things  have  got  to  be  worked  for,  and  be- 
long only  to  those  who  excel.  *^Rome  was  not  built  in  a 
day."  Without  patience  and  slow  cumulative  effort,  the 
great  things  are  not  attainable,  nor  ever  will  be.  To  dis- 
parage or  despise  the  best  things  and  the  great  things  is  an 
offense  to  mankind.  For  what  is  the  use  of  opportunity,  if 
there  is  nothing  worth  gaining?  It  is  better  to  admire  even 
wealth  or  power  than  to  admire  nothing.  There  is  this  much 
of  truth  even  in  Nietzsche.  In  insisting  upon  the  pnnciple 
of  Rangordnung,  or  order  of  rank,  he  was  in  part  protesting 
against  the  aboUtion  of  standards.  If  we  condemn  his  de- 
mand for  a  gradation  of  persons  and  classes,  we  must  echo 
and  re-affirm  his  demand  for  a  gradation  of  values.  We  must 
believe  that  nothing  is  too  good  for  a  democracy.  Science, 
philosophy,  art,  virtue  and  saintUness  must  be  as  reverently 
regarded,  as  earnestly  sought  and  cultivated  as  formeriy. 
Otherwise  the  much-prized  opportunity  which  a  democracy 
affords  is  an  equal  opportunity  for  nothing. 

These  several  motives  which  underly  the  love  of  equahty, 
are  the  motives  which  justify  or  discredit  the  ideal  of  social 
democracy  In  so  far  as  social  democracy  means  a  com- 
passionate regard  for  all  human  beings  as  having  feelings 
powers  and  capacities  of  the  same  generic  type;  m  so  far  as  it 
means  the  equalizing  of  opportunity,  and  a  mutual  respect, 
it  rests  upon  sound  and  incontrovertible  ethical  grounds. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  in  so  far  as  it  exalts  failure,  inverts 
standards  and  acts  as  a  drag  upon  the  forward  movement 
of  life,  it  is  reactionary  and  abhorrent. 


Sio 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


VI.    DO   WE    REALLY  MEAN   IT? 


This,  or  something  Hke  this,  is  what  we  mean  by  democracy 
as  a  social  ideal.     Now,  do  we  really  mean  it?     The  fact  is 
that  we  have  long  since  committed  ourselves  to  it.     We  have 
encouraged  the  poor  to  aspire  to  wealth,  the  ignorant  to  seek 
light,  and  the  weak  to  covet  power.     We  have  done  more 
than  this  —  we  have  shown  them  the  way.     For  we  have 
compelled  every  man  to  secure  the  rudiments  of  education 
and  thus  to  become  aware  of  the  world  about  him.     We 
permit  the  organization  of  the  democratic  propaganda,  we 
supply  the  motive  and  we  bring  every  man  within  the  reach 
of  it.^    Last  and  most  important  of  all,  we  have  distributed 
political  power  equally  among  men  of  every  station  and  con- 
dition; with  the  result  that  the  very  few  who  are  fortunate 
may  at  any  time  be  out-voted  by  the  overwhelming  majority 
of  those  who  are  relatively  unfortunate.     Does  any  sane  man 
suppose  that  what  has  been  scattered  broadcast  can  now  be 
withdrawn?     Or  that  those  who  possess  the  opportunity  and 
know  it  are  going  to  refrain  from  using  it? 

But  I  do  not  beUeve  that  there  are  many  Americans  who 
would  withdraw  the  pledge  and  profession  of  democracy  if 
they  could.  We  have  not  lost  conviction.  We  need  only 
the  courage  to  see  it  through. 

First,  our  courage  will  be  tried  by  the  internal  re-adjust- 
ments which  will  be  necessary,  which  are  already  proving 
necessary,  in  so  far  as  social  democracy  goes  forward.     It 
would  be  fatuous  to  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  social 
democracy  will  have  to  be  paid  for.     Are  we  prepared  to  pay 
by  surrendering  personal  advantages  that  we  now  enjoy? 
We  are  aU  Hke  Artemus  Ward  ready  to  sacrifice  our  wife's 
relations  on  the  altar  of  our  country.     But  this  sacrifice  will 
touch  our  affections  more  nearly.     Most  of  those  who  read 
these  words  would  lose  materially  by  a  more  equal  distribu- 
tion of  opportunity,  wealth  and  power.    Now  if  we  enjoy 
more  than  the  average  good  fortune,  are  we  willing  that  it 
should  be  curtailed  until  such  time  as  those  who  enjoy  only 
the  minimum  shall  be  abreast  of  us?    Are  we  wiUing  to  give 


THE   AMERICAN  IDEAL   OF   SOCIAL  EQUALITY  511 


up  our  own  dear  and  familiar  satisfactions?  Or  are  we  demo- 
cratic only  in  so  far  as  we  expect  to  gain  by  it?  Are  we 
democratic  only  in  a  rhetorical  and  vaguely  sentimental 
sense,  as  many  profess  Christianity  or  mean  to  be  "good'*  ? 
If  so,  we  are  not  ready  for  the  future.  This  is  a  time  to  re- 
trench— not  merely  in  the  consumption  of  luxuries,  but  in  the 
desire  for  them.  The  whole  of  democracy  will  be  less  in- 
dulgent to  us  than  the  half  of  it  we  have  so  far  achieved. 
Without  some  previous  self-discipline  we  shall  many  of  us 
greet  the  dawn  with  a  wry  face.  But  in  so  far  as  we  have 
learned  to  live  more  austerely,  and  to  find  our  happiness  in 
those  things  which  are  not  diminished  by  being  widely  shared, 
we  may,  in  the  time  to  come,  have  the  heart  to  be  cheerful 
despite  the  realization  of  our  ideals. 

Second,  our  courage  will  be  tried  by  the  exigencies  of  the 
present  war.  To  have  the  courage  of  our  democratic  con- 
victions means  a  willingness  to  fight  a  long  hard  fight,  to 
endure  a  wearing  and  galling  strain,  in  order  that  we  and 
other  peoples  like  us  may  be  permitted  to  proceed  with 
democracy.  If  we  are  democrats,  then  Germany  as  at 
present  governed,  motivated  and  inspired  is  our  irreconcil- 
able enemy.  To  have  the  courage  of  our  democratic  con- 
victions implies  that  we  accept  this  challenge.  We  have 
first  to  win  the  privilege  of  being  good  democrats.  As  our 
brothers  in  Russia  are  learning  to  tl\eir  cost,  this  privilege  is 
not  to  be  had  for  the  asking.  It  is  idle  for  peace-loving 
democracies  merely  to  interchange  their  sentiments  when 
they  and  their  sentiments  with  them  are  in  mortal  peril.  You 
remember  the  man  who  assured  his  anxious  friend  that  his 
dog  would  not  bite  him.  "You  know  it,''  said  the  friend, 
"and  I  know  it,  but  does  the  dog  know  it?" 

We  have  recently  been  told  that  it  is  our  duty  to  support 
the  President's  democratic  and  pacific  professions  "up  to  the 
hilt."  I  Hke  the  metaphor,  and  I  subscribe  to  this  opinion. 
I  should  like  only  to  add  that  the  men  who  are  most  un- 
qualifiedly supporting  the  President  "up  to  the  hilt"  are 
the  men  who  have  their  hands  on  the  hilt.  I  count  no  man 
a  resolute  adherent  of  democracy,  or  of  peace,  or  of  any  other 


512 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


good  thing,  who  will  not  if  needs  be  fight  for  that  good  thing  — 
and  with  the  weapons  which  will  most  effectually  meet  the 
danger  that  menaces  it.  For  that  reason  I  salute  as  just 
now  the  best  democrats  among  us  all  those  fortunate  men 
who  are  in  France  or  on  their  way. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 
THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 

That  democracy  whose  safety  in  the  world  we  are  pledged 
to  defend  is  both  an  equalized  social  life  such  as  I  have  under- 
taken to  define  above,  and  also  a  form  of  government.  The 
two  conceptions  are  closely  related.  Political  life  is  a  part 
of  social  life,  and  a  polity  of  caste  and  privilege  is  scarcely 
consistent  with  the  spirit  of  social  equality.  Furthermore, 
it  will,  I  believe,  appear  that  only  by  the  means  of  political 
democracy  is  it  possible  to  realize  the  end  of  social  democracy. 
Nevertheless  it  is  theoretically  possible  that  social  equality 
should  be  the  aim  of  a  paternalistic  autocracy;  or  that  a 
popular  government  should  seek  to  perfect  a  few  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  many.  The  two  conceptions  rest  upon  different 
and  largely  independent  premises. 

I.    THE  MOTIVE  OF  NEGATIVE  LIBERTY 

The  most  evident  and  characteristic  feature  of  government 
is  its  claim  of  authority  and  its  exercise  of  coercive  power. 
Political  democracy  begins,  then,  with  resistance  and  libera- 
tion. In  our  own  American  tradition  the  term  'liberty  "  is 
associated  with  the  war  for  independence,  with  the  determi- 
nation not  to  be  governed  by  Great  Britain.  The  fact  that 
we  won  our  political  autonomy  .by  the  overthrow  of  existing 
authority  persists  in  our  national  memory.  Just  as  there  are 
said  still  to  be  Democrats  who  are  voting  for  Andrew  Jack- 
son, so  in  obscure  comers  of  our  land  there  are  still  rebellious 
colonists  who  are  fighting  the  hated  "red-coats"  and  their 
hired  Hessians,  or  shaking  their  fists  toward  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  and  defying  anybody  to  come  and  conquer  us.  It  is 
this  memory  which  quickens  our  sympathy  with  oppressed 
nationalities  and  makes  us  their  natural  ally.    But  so  far  as 

513 


SM 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


our  own  liberty  is  concerned  this  sentiment  has  long  since 
been  an  anachronism.  We  may  now  take  our  national 
independence  for    granted  and  expend  our  feeUngs  more 

opportunely.  ...  . 

This  deliverance  of  a  people  from  a  foreign  yoke  is  one  of 
the  negative  senses  of  the  term  ^^Hberty.''  It  is  only  acci- 
dentally associated  with  democracy,  since  it  is  equally 
possible  for  a  monarchical  state  like  Germany  to  value  its 
independence.  But  there  is  another  negative  sense  of  the 
term  *' liberty  "  that  is  bound  up  with  democracy  in  principle. 
This  is  the  deUverance  of  an  individual  or  class  from  govern- 
mental authority  as  such.  The  motive  of  national  liberty  is 
the  desire  to  have  one's  own  government;  the  motive  of  in- 
dividual liberty  is  to  be  freed  from  one's  own  government. 
It  is  this  motive  that  I  wish  first  to  consider. 

The  maximum  of  negative  liberty  is  well  expressed  in 
BluntschU's  phrase,  *'to  obey  as  Httle  as  possible."  ^    This 
idea  has  a  justification  both  in  principle  and  in  experience. 
In  principle,  the  state  exists  for  man,  not  man  for  the  state. 
Coercion  is  at  best  a  necessary  evil.     It  must  be  the  ultimate 
object  of  all  institutions  that  the  individuals  who  live  under 
them  should  profit  by  them.    The  authority  of  the  state  is 
needed  in  order  to  protect  individuals  from  one  another,  and 
from  their  own  hasty  impulses;  but  in  the  last  analysis  the 
state,  Uke  other  institutions,  exists  in  order  that  individuals 
may  so  far  as  possible  do  what  they  want  to  do  and  be  what 
they  want  to  be.     Sheer  coercion,  the  bare  motive  of  obe- 
dience, has  no  justification  at  all.     Even  Treitschke,  who 
holds  that  ''submission  is  what  the  State  primarily  requires,'' 
feels  constrained  to  regard  the  state  as  springing  from  "the 
collective  will  of  a  people."     And  Burke,  who  holds  that  the 
king  exists  not  to  obey  but  to  be  obeyed,  was  compelled  to 
acknowledge  that  "kings,  in  one  sense,  are  undoubtedly  the 
servants  of  the  people,  because  their  power  has  no  other 
rational  end  than  that  of  the  general  advantage."  ^    To  obey 
as  little  as  possible  means,  then,  to  see  to  it  that  the  state 

1  Theory  of  the  St€te,  English  translation,  p.  431  • 

2  "Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France,"  Works,  1807,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  40- 


POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 


515 


does  express  the  collective  will,  or  that  its  power  is  used  to  the 
general  advantage;  and  it  means  that  this  censorship  is  being 
exercised  by  those  whose  will  or  advantage  is  in  question. 

In  an  article  written  before  our  entrance  into  the  war,  on 
*'The  American  Democratic  Ideal,"  Mr.  Brooks  Adams  gave 
expression  to  the  despondent  view  that  "our  'democratic 
ideal '  is  only  a  phrase  to  express  our  renunciation  as  a  nation 
of  all  standards  of  duty,  and  the  substitution  therefore  of  a 
reference  to  private  judgment."  ^    He  found  evidence  of  this 
in  the  attempt  of  women  to  escape  domestic  duties,  and  in 
the  attempt  of  men  to  escape  military  duties  —  both  in  the 
name  of  democracy.     He  was  correct  in  saying  that  "no 
organized  social  system,  such  as  we  commonly  call  a  national 
civilization,  can  cohere  against  those  enemies  which  must 
certainly  beset  it,  should  it  fail  to  recognize  as  its  primary 
standard  of  duty,  the  obligation  of  the  individual  man  and 
woman  to  sacrifice  themselves  for  the  community  in  time  of 
need."     Since  Mr.  Adams  wrote  the  American  community 
has  most  loyally  recognized  this  obligation.     But  Mr.  Adams 
did  not  do  justice  to  the  sound, motive  which  underlies  such 
individualism  as  he  deprecated.     Neither  the  family  nor  the 
state  possesses  any  justification  save  as  it  serves  those  of 
whom  it  demands  sacrifice.     To  insist  that  the  sacrifice  be 
reduced  to  a  minimum,  and  that  it  be  fruitful,  is  evidence  of 
a  general  awakening  to  what  institutions  are  for.     And  it  is 
both  natural  and  proper  that  this  insistence  should  come 
from  those  who  are  to  make  the  sacrifice.     The  proper  cor- 
rective is  not  an  appeal  to  the  blind  motives  of  duty  or 
obedience;  but  a  clear  proof  of  the  benefits  of  family  solidar- 
ity, or  of  national  defense,  or  of  legal  authority,  so  that  the 
necessary  sacrifice  may  be  made  with  conviction  and  without 
resentment. 

The  idea  of  negative  liberty  is  grounded  in  experience  as 
well  as  in  principle.  It  is  unnecessary  to  prove  that  authori- 
ties have  been  arbitrary  and  irresponsible.  It  is  even  true 
that  they  tend  so  to  be.  For  anything  that  is  once  estab- 
lished tends  to  acquire  inertia,  and  a  prestige  that  blinds  men 

^  Yale  Review,  January,  1916,  p.  233. 


ri6 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 


517 


to  its  failures  and  its  abuses.  The  most  benevolent  of 
governments,  furthermore,  has  an  interest  of  its  own,  and  in 
some  measure  exploits  the  interests  of  which  it  is  the  trustee. 
If  governments  have  grown  less  irresponsible,  it  is  because 
the  interests  exploited  have  grown  more  quick  to  insist  upon 
their  own  recognition.  Refractory  subjects  have  been  the 
chief  restraint  upon  the  arbitrariness  of  rulers.  Rebellious- 
ness has  always  been  based  upon  genuine  grievances,  even 
when  it  has  failed  to  correct  them  or  has  brought  worse  in 
their  place.  A  certain  sturdy  independence  or  even  trucu- 
lence  is  a  sounder  and  more  constructive  political  motive 
than  a  mere  inert  and  docile  submission. 

II.    THE  PRINCIPLE   OF  CIVIL  LIBERTY 

But  the  principle  of  authority,  dismissed  at  one  door, 
comes  in  at  another;  and  men  overthrow  their  old  and  legiti- 
mate masters  only  to  find  themselves  compelled  to  submit  to 
new.  "Natural  rights ''  to  do  as  one  pleases  do  not  take  care 
of  themselves.  Although  nature  may  define  them,  nature 
does  not  create  or  maintain  them.  For  this,  combination 
and  restraint  prove  necessary.  The  same  motive  which 
leads  men  to  struggle  for  economic  advantage  leads  both 
capital  and  labor  to  combine,  and  to  hold  the  individual 
capitalist  or  laborer  in  check  in  order  that  the  class  as  a 
whole  may  struggle  more  effectually.  Free  competition 
with  its  incidental  advantages  to  the  consumer  appears  to  be 
then  possible,  if  at  all,  only  through  the  combination  of  con- 
sumers against  both  labor  and  capital.  Similarly,  the  re- 
volutionist cannot  make  head  alone  against  the  existing 
authority.  The  voluntary  association  by  which  government 
is  checked  or  overthrown,  is  transformed  by  the  exigencies 
of  the  struggle  into  a  new  government.  The  present  revo- 
lutionary government  in  Russia  is  enabled  to  secure  the  bene- 
fits of  revolution  only  in  so  far  as  it  suppresses  lawlessness 
with  a  strong  hand.  The  Bolsheviki  leaders,  having  urged 
the  people  to  end  war  by  throwing  down  their  arms,  are  now 
urging  them  to  take  them  up  again  in  order  by  their  concerted 
strength  to  protect  their  new  liberties.    Even  the  anarchist 


finds  it  necessary  to  organize  secret  societies,  within  which 
he  submits  to  the  most  oppressive  discipline.     And  if  the 
anarchist  propaganda  should  succeed  it  would  prove  neces- 
sary to  formulate  and  enforce  the  most  severe  laws,  in  order 
to  maintain  the  happy  condition  of  lawlessness. 
^  The  appeal  from  the  state  to  the  people  in  the  name  of 
liberty  does  not,  then,  deUver.  the  individual  altogether  from 
restraint.     It  results  in  new  forms  of  authority  which  are 
more  hastily  improvised,  less  orderly,  and  at  the  same  time 
often  more  harsh.     Therefore  it  is  quite  possible  to  appeal 
from  the  people  to  the  state  in  the  name  of  this  same  prin- 
ciple of  liberty.     This  is  the  motive  underlying  the  idea  of 
civil  liberty.     When  the  tri-color  was  worn  in  France  as  an 
emblem  of  political  orthodoxy,  Mivart  tells  us  that  a  certain 
M.  Brifont  refused  to  wear  it.     *'A  working-man  meeting 
him  in  the  street  addressed  him  with,  'Citizen,  why  do  you 
not  wear  the  badge  of  freedom?'     To  which  he  promptly 
replied,  'Why, my  friend, to  show  that  I  am  free, to  be  sure.' ''  ^ 
So  readily  does  any  popular  propaganda,  not  excepting  the 
propaganda  of  'liberty"  itself,  assume  the  sinister  aspect  of 
an  inquisition,  that  individuals  desiring  to  be  free  may  soon 
find  themselves  longing  even  for  a  Bourbon  monarchy. 

It  seems  clear  from  the  example  of  the  French  Revolution, 
that  the  most  oppressive  and  terrible  of  all  tyrannies  is  that 
exercised  by  the  demagogue.  A  government  like  that  of 
Robespierre  is  nominally  a  popular  government,  but  actually 
a  government  by  secret  intrigue.  The  power  is  absolute 
because  it  is  exercised  in  the  name  of  all.  The  most  ex- 
treme measures  are  possible  because  anyone  who  opposes 
himself  to  them  must,  for  the  moment  at  least,  appear  to 
oppose  the  popular  will.  It  is  inevitably  an  inquisitorial 
government  because  it  depends  upon  the  superficial  una- 
nimity of  opinion,  and  is  thus  led  from  the  motive  of  self- 
preservation  to  suppress  independence  of  judgment.  Since 
the  people  have  no  clear  idea  of  their  interest  nor  any  orderly 
constitutional  means  of  expressing  it,  the  power  is  given  into 
the  hands  of  those  who  bear  the  reputation  of  being  the 

*  Mivart:  Essays  and  Criticisms ,  Vol.  I,  p.  138,  note. 


5i8 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 


S19 


friends  of  the  people.  Such  a  reputation  is  best  acquired 
not  by  serving  the  public  good,  but  by  simulating  popular 
manners  or  tricks  of  speech,  by  exciting  popular  hatred  and 
then  gratifying  it  by  cruel  vengeance,  or  by  an  affectation 
of  the  martyr's  pose,  exhibiting  faithful  wounds  suffered  in 
the  people's  behalf.  Those  who  thus  represent  themselves 
as  the  people's  servants  are  in  fact  their  masters.  Fear  of 
popular  wrath  leads  individuals  to  submit  slavishly  to  popu- 
lar idols;  and  the  ascendancy  thus  gained  is  used  in  turn  to 
control  that  very  opinion  from  which  the  ascendancy  is  de- 
rived. Since  power  depends  upoji  psychological  forces  that 
are  essentially  unstable,  all  men  live  from  day  to  day,  even 
from  hour  to  hour,  in  the  fear  of  death.  The  master  motive 
in  life  is  that  of  bare  preservation;  security  is  unknown.  To 
save  one's  self  it  is  necessary  to  be  on  the  winning  side,  that 
is,  on  that  side  which  for  the  time  commands  the  popular 
passion,  and  to  change  enemies  and  friends  as  fast  as  this 
passion  fluctuates.  The  only  permanent  attitude  of  man  to 
man  is  that  of  suspicion;  and  fear,  the  most  brutalizing  of  all 
emotions,  undermines  all  principles  and  loyalties. 

The  French  Revolution  simply  illustrated  to  a  superlative 
degree  political  truths  that  are  as  old  as  Plato  and  as  new  as 
to-day.  It  demonstrated  with  an  epic  grandeur  that  bad 
democracy  which  in  practice  coincides  with  the  most  in- 
tolerable despotism.  It  is  such  experience  as  this  which  has 
led  men  to  prize  the  guarantees  of  stable  government,  and  to 
prefer  a  rigorous  but  well-defined  authority  to  the  blind, 
uncertain  and  inquisitorial  oppression  of  the  unorganized 
social  mass.  This  preference  does  not  imply  a  selfish  desire 
to  profit  from  special  privilege,  or  a  timid  docility;  it  pro- 
ceeds from  just  as  genuine  a  love  of  liberty  as  that  which 
prompts  to  popular  revolutions.  The  more  radical  propa- 
ganda of  natural  liberty  protests  against  the  arbitrariness  of 
authority  in  behalf  of  the  right  of  every  life  to  expand  and  to 
satisfy  its  wants.  It  breaks  down  the  established  barriers 
which  restrain  the  will,  promises  a  general  license,  and  finally, 
since  it  is  impossible  to  escape  the  preponderance  of  the  social 
aggregate  over  the  individual,  substitutes  a  reign  of  caprice 


for  a  reign  of  law.  The  cult  of  civil  liberty,  on  the  other 
hand,  protests  against  the  tyranny  of  the  social  mass  or  its 
agents,  in  behalf  of  security;  in  behalf  of  an  opportunity  to 
breathe  deep  in  some  sure  though  narrow  refuge.  It  pro- 
tests against  the  wanton  and  intrusive  interference  of  one's 
neighbors  and  associates,  preferring  the  more  impersonal 
control  of  a  remoter  and  more  stable  central  authority. 

In  short,  the  state  is  both  a  menace  to  liberty  and  also 
an  indispensable  means  to  liberty.  The  cause  of  liberty  is 
served  neither  by  those  who  break  it  down  nor  by  those  who 
exalt  it,  but  by  those  who  limit  its  action  and  use  it  well. 
Democracy,  like  any  other  form  of  government,  must  accord 
with  these  principles.  On  the  one  hand,  the  state  must  be 
responsive  to  the  interests  of  the  governed,  and  avoid  im- 
posing an  external  and  arbitrary  restraint  upon  them. 
Every  constituent  interest  within  society  possesses  a  natural 
right  to  be  and  to  satisfy  itself,  except  in  so  far  as  the  very 
protection  and  generalization  of  this  right  require  that  it 
shall  be  curtailed.  Every  form  of  public  authority  must 
justify  itself  to  those  interests  of  which  it  demands  obedience. 
Whatever  nullifies  the  primary  interest  and  expansiveness 
of  life  must  assume  the  burden  of  proof.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  state  must  protect  the  individual  from  the  aggres- 
sion of  his  fellows,  from  partisan  and  sectarian  tyranny,  and 
from  the  blind  and  hasty  oppression  of  the  mass.  It  must 
supply  those  guarantees  without  which  the  spectres  of  fear 
and  suspicion  stalk  abroad,  and  paralyze  all  forms  of  pur- 
poseful and  consecutive  living. 

III.    THE  PREMISE   OF  INNATE  EQUALITY 

The  idea  of  liberty  requires  that  government  shall  be 
provident  and  liberal ;  that  in  exercising  restraint  upon  the 
individual  the  state  shall  be  guided  by  the  principle  of  guar- 
anteeing to  the  individual  under  the  law  the  largest  possible 
sphere  within  which  he  may  act  in  accordance  with  his  own 
ideas  and  judgment.  But  in  whom  shall  the  sovereignty  be 
vested?  From  what  source  shall  the  coercive  power  of 
government  be  derived?    According  to  the  creed  of  political 


/ 


520 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


democracy  government  must  be  not  only  for  the  people  but 
hy  the  people.  In  the  last  analysis  government  is  to  derive 
its  power  from  the  consent  of  the  government.  This  does 
not  necessarily  imply  the  republican  form  of  organization; 
but  only  that  the  popular  will  shall  exercise  control,  and  that 
this  control  shall  be  recognized  by  law  and  provided  with  the 
means  for  effective  application.  We  are  fighting  in  this 
war  not  to  substitute  presidents  for  kings,  but  to  substitute 
elective  legislative  bodies  and  elective  officials  who  are  an- 
swerable to  the  people,  for  autocrats  who  are  answerable  only 
to  God  or  to  the  conscience  of  their  caste. 

Popular  government  means,  then,  that  sovereignty  is  dis- 
tributed among  those  whose  interests  are  at  stake.  It  means 
that  those  who  hold  political  office  are  not,  strictly  speaking, 
rulers;  but  agencies  by  which  the  people  at  large  govern 
themselves.  In  such  a  poKty  there  are  no  longer  any  sub- 
jects, but  only  citizens,  that  is,  individual  units  of  political 
power.  And  the  fundamental  political  act  is  the  vote,  by 
which  in  all  developed  democracies  each  of  these  units  is 
recognized  as  the  exact  equivalent  of  every  other.  We  thus 
find  political  democracy  like  social  democracy  to  involve  the 
principle  of  equality.  But  here  equahty  is  commonly 
thought  of  not  as  something  desirable,  to  be  achieved  by 
education  or  social  reconstruction;  but  as  something  inborn 
and  inalienable  which  gives  men  equal  claims  or  *' rights''  in 
advance  of  their  being  recognized.  The  vote  is  thought  of 
not  merely  as  a  means  by  which  men  may  be  perfected  and 
brought  into  a  finer  social  fellowship,  but  as  something  that 
IS  no  more  than  a  man's  due.  Universal  suffrage  is  regarded 
not  as  a  matter  of  benevolence,  but  as  a  matter  of  justice. 
We  must  therefore  consider  equality  in  this  new  aspect,  as 
something  which  a  man  possesses  by  a  sort  of  birthright. 

Both  the  American  Declaration  of  Independence  and  the 
French  Declaration  of  1879  spoke  of  men  as  ''born"  or 
''created  "  equal,  and  thus  argued  for  democracy  as  a  means 
of  conserving  something  that  men  in  some  sense  already 
possessed.  The  opponents  of  democracy  now  dismiss  these 
declarations  with  an  off-hand  reference  to  the  obvious  facts 


POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 


S2I 


of  inequality.  But  in  so  far  as  these  facts  are  obvious  they 
have  never  been  denied.  The  inequality  of  human  capacity 
was  as  obvious  to  the  political  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth 
century  as  it  is  to  their  critics  of  to-day.  The  unequal 
opportunity  of  improving  natural  capacities  is  also  obvious. 
But  this  furnished  the  very  point  of  the  argument.  In- 
equalities of  opportunity  develop  under  institutions,  such 
as  hereditary  aristocracy  and  private  property,  and  are 
legalized  and  perpetuated  by  such  institutions.  To  say 
that  men  are  born  equal  means  simply  that  such  unequal 
opportunities  are  institutional  or  artificial,  and  not  inborn 
or  natural.  Strip  men  of  the  outward  trappings  of  civiliza- 
tion, destroy  the  existing  system^  and  the  original  equality 
appears.  You  will  find  it  in  the  more  primitive  stages  of 
human  evolution.  You  will  find  it  in  the  simple  life  of 
frontiersmen.  And  you  will  find  it  to-day,  when  the  com- 
mon emergency  and  the  common  hardships  of  war  suddenly 
sweep  away  the  differences  of  privilege,  and  emphasize  the 
elemental  needs  and  capacities  which  men  have  in  common. 
In  other  words,  organized  society  has  simply  obscured  and 
hidden  from  view  a  more  original  and  natural  equality  which 
men  have  received  from  nature.  Democracy  is  a  recognition 
that  inequality  is  largely  man-made;  and  that  society  owes 
it  to  men  to  restore  an  inheritance  which  it  has  taken  away. 
The  idea  of  a  natural  equality  also  means  that  all  men  are 
born  similar.  ^^ Men  are  unequal,  hut  they  are  all  men,''^  ^  says 
Enrico  Ferri.  Although  they  differ  in  the  degree  of  their 
capacity,  they  nevertheless  possess  capacity  of  the  same 
type.  What  Shylock  said  of  a  Jew,  can  be  said  of  any  man. 
"Hath  he  not  eyes?  Hath  he  not  hands,  organs,  dimensions, 
senses,  affections,  passions?  fed  with  the  same  food,  hurt  with 
the  same  weapons,  subject  to  the  same  diseases,  healed  by 
the  same  means,  warmed  and  cooled  by  the  same  Winter 
and  Summer,  as  his  fellow  is?  "  This  is  a  fundamental  fact, 
—  the  possession  by  all  men  of  like  interests,  and  like  capaci- 
ties for  happiness  or  misery.  This  fact  has  to  do  with  the 
ultimate  standard  by  which  public  policy  is  to  be  justified. 

1  Socialism  and  Positive  Science,  English  trans.  5th  edition,  p.  9. 


522 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


If  we  suppose  the  good  to  be  something  dictated  to  life  from 
without,  deduced  from  some  a  priori  principle,  or  imposed  by 
some  higher  will,  then  we  may  ignore  this  fact.  But  if  we 
suppose,  as  I  think  we  must,  that  the  good  consists  in  the 
happiness  of  mankind,  then  it  follows  that  we  must  acknowl- 
edge the  right  of  every  man,  so  far  as  possible,  to  be  happy. 
One  man's  happiness  is  just  as  genuine  a  case  of  good  as 
another's;  one  man's  misery  is  just  as  genuine  a  case  of  evil 
as  the  misery  of  any  other  man.  If  a  man  is  unhappy,  no 
matter  who  he  is,  then  his  unhappiness  is  evidence  that  the 
society  in  which  he  lives  is  imperfect.  There  is  no  other 
kind  of  evidence  that  can  take  precedence  of  this.  The 
policy  of  the  state  is  to  be  judged  by  such  evidence;  and  the 
man,  whatever  his  name  or  station,  who  asserts  his  interests 
or  his  grievances,  is  submitting  evidence  which  no  government 
can  justify  itself  in  ignoring.  In  other  words,  public  policy 
must  be  judged  equally  by  the  condition  of  all  men  who  are 
capable  of  suffering,  or  of  being  happy;  which  means  all  men 
without  exception. 

EquaHty  in  this  sense  of  similar  capacity  for  happiness  and 
misery  requires  that  all  men  shall  be  allowed  to  state  their 
wants  and  submit  their  grievances;  but  it  does  not  imply 
that  all  men  shall  be  equally  entitled  to  judge  and  control 
public  policy.  It  is  quite  consistent  with  this  limited  view 
of  equality  that  the  disposition  of  these  wants  and  grievances 
should  be  left  to  the  paternal  indulgence  of  a  superior.  Polit- 
ical democracy,  however,  requires  that  the  people  should  not 
only  make  their  interests  known,  but  that  they  should  them- 
selves be  in  the  last  resort  the  judges  of  the  wisdom  or 
justice  of  the  provision  which  is  made  for  these  interests. 
The  argument  here  appeals  to  a  different  aspect  of  human 
equality,  the  possession  by  all  normal  human  adults  of  a 
like  capacity  of  reason. 

What,  in  the  last  analysis,  is  the  source  of  wisdom  in 
human  affairs?  There  are  but  two  possible  answers.  Ac- 
cording to  one  view  wisdom  is  the  exclusive  prerogative  of 
divinely  delegated  or  hereditary  authorities.  According  to 
the  other  view  wisdom  is  the  common  possession  of  those  who 


POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 


523 


have  wits.  The  first  view  has  long  since  been  discarded 
everywhere  but  in  politics  and  religion.  In  science  and  in 
the  affairs  of  daily  life  it  is  assumed  that  the  truth  lies  in  the 
evidence,  and  that  provided  he  can  cite  the  evidence,  one 
man's  judgment  is  as  good  as  another's.  Political  democ- 
racy appeals,  then,  to  the  notion  that  truth  cannot  be  cor- 
nered and  monopolized.  The  best  way  to  achieve  wisdom 
in  a  political  matter,  as  in  any  other  matter,  is  through  the 
open  forum  of  discussion.  Every  normal  human  adult  is 
entitled  to  an  opinion,  for  the  reason  that  he  has  a  mind. 
There  is  an  additional  reason  for  consulting  every  mind  in 
the  case  of  politics,  because  in  this  case  each  mind  will  be 
peculiarly  well-informed  about  a  part  of  the  problem,  namely, 
about  its  own  interests.  But  apart  from  this  special  con- 
sideration, to  which  we  shall  return  later,  every  rationally 
endowed  human  being  possesses  the  basal  qualification  for 
participating  in  the  choice  of  policy.  Every  man  has  a  claim 
to  be  heard  and  to  be  respected  as  an  organ  of  truth. 


IV.    THE  LOVE   OF  POWER 

Political  democracy  implies  an  equal  regard  for  human 
interests,  and  an  equal  access  to  the  public  forum  of  discus- 
sion; but  it  also  implies  a  wide  distribution  of  power.  And 
it  is  quite  possible  that  this  power,  despite  its  distribution, 
should  be  used  to  abridge  that  negative  liberty  which  we  have 
seen  to  be  the  starting-point  of  political  democracy.  This 
is  what  Hobbes  had  in  mind  when  he  said:  ^^ Subjects  have 
no  greater  liberty  in  a  popular  than  in  a  monarchical  state. 
That  which  deceives  them  is  the  equal  participation  of  com- 
mand." We  have  seen  in  our  observations  on  the  French 
Revolution  that  a  popular  government  may  exert  more  con- 
straint upon  liberty  than  an  autocratic  government. 

This  possibility  arises  from  the  fact  that  an  independent 
motive  is  here  at  work.  There  is  a  love  of  power  for  its  own 
sake.  This  may  be  a  direct  expression  of  what  McDougall 
calls  the  instinct  of  '*  self-assertion  or  self-display."  But 
whether  it  be  an  elementary  impulse  or  not,  there  is  no  doubt 
of  its  being  a  constant  and  universal  force  in  political  life. 


524 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


Most  men  would  rather  rule  than  be  ruled.  They  enjoy 
both  the  possession  of  authority  and  the  prestige  which 
accompanies  it.  Political  power,  like  other  power,  is  not 
easily  withdrawn  when  it  is  once  given;  men  cUng  to  it  even 
when  they  have  ceased  to  be  useful  either  to  others  or  to 
themselves.  Without  doubt  a  democracy  so  strengthens 
this  motive  by  appealing  to  it  and  encouraging  it,  that  it  be- 
comes one  of  the  master-motives  of  life.  In  other  words, 
popular  government  tends  to  become  not  a  means,  but  an 
end  in  itself. 

In  so  far,  however,  as  the  love  of  political  power  is  an  inde- 
pendent interest,  it  must  be  regarded  as  a  special  interest 
which  like  others  requires  regulation  and  control  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  whole.  It  is  no  more  a  political  finality  than 
the  love  of  money,  or  the  love  of  poetry,  or  the  love  of 
pleasure,  or  the  love  of  economic  or  military  power.  As  a 
widely  felt  need,  it  must  be  taken  account  of,  but  it  must 
take  its  place  and  its  turn  among  the  rest.  It  may  consti- 
tute an  incidental  advantage  to  be  derived  from  democratic 
institutions,  and  undoubtedly  contributes  greatly  to  their 
strength.  But  in  itself  it  does  not  justify  democratic  insti- 
tutions any  more  than  would  their  satisfaction  of  any  other 
special  interest.  In  principle  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  a 
just  and  provident  regard  for  all  the  interests  of  the  com- 
munity should  require  that  this  interest,  like  avarice  or 
sensual  indulgence,  should  be  held  in  check. 

The  love  of  power  for  its  own  sake  tends  to  a  kind  of  de- 
mocracy which  is  as  vicious  in  principle  as  any  sort  of  irre- 
sponsible despotism.  I  refer  to  the  tyranny  of  a  class 
majority.  In  any  given  historical  situation  the  so-called 
"masses  "  may  constitute  a  class  just  as  truly  as  the  so-called 
'^classes."  When  revolution  results  from  class  war,  from  a 
conflict  between  the  class  of  labor  and  the  class  of  capital,  or 
between  the  class  of  the  low-born  and  that  of  the  high-born, 
we  must  not  be  misled  by  the  fact  that  the  former  is  numeri- 
cally greater  than  the  latter.  If  a  numerical  majority  covets 
the  exclusive  power  enjoyed  by  a  numerical  minority,  it  does 
not  act  on  any  higher  principle  than  that  by  which  the  estab- 


POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 


525 


lished  powers  seek  to  maintain  themselves.  A  change  of 
masters  does  not  necessarily  imply  a  change  of  heart.  If  we 
mean  by  democracy  a  state  in  which  the  power  of  numbers 
is  for  the  moment  greater  than  the  power  of  wealth,  birth  or 
talent,  then  democracy  possesses  no  peculiar  ethical  justifi- 
cation. No  might,  not  even  the  might  of  numbers,  makes 
right.  And  it  is  to  this  arbitrary  and  indefensible  kind  of 
democracy  that  the  love  of  power  for  power^s  sake  tends  to 
lead. 

v.    THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  REPRESENTATION 

The  final  justification  of  political  democracy  lies  in  the 
principle  of  representation.  I  do  not  refer  to  any  special 
mechanism  of  government  by  which  in  a  state  too  large  to 
permit  of  direct  popular  government,  the  people  may  dele- 
gate their  authority  to  elected  officials.  I  refer  to  a  more 
fundamental  principle,  of  which  such  mechanisms  are  only 
the  necessary  instruments.  I  mean  that  the  government 
shall  recognize  and  take  account  of  all  the  interests  which  its 
policy  affects;  and  that  these  interests  shall  have  facilities 
for  making  their  claims  effective.  Popular  government  is 
thus  the  guarantee  of  Hberty  and  equaUty. 

PoUtical  democracy  in  this  sense  is  neither  pious  sentiment 
nor  unruly  wilfulness.  It  rests  upon  a  solid  fact  which  the 
race  has  learned  in  the  school  of  experience.  The  fact  is 
this:  that  the  best  assurance  of  having  any  given  interest 
taken  account  of  in  public  poUcy  is  afforded  by  giving  that 
interest  a  share  in  the  control  of  pubHc  policy.  Every  now 
and  then  some  one  arises  in  our  midst  and  solemnly  an- 
nounces the  discovery  that  the  best  form  of  government 
would  be  the  absolute  rule  of  a  perfectly  wise,  perfectly 
benevolent  and  perfectly  disinterested  despot.  Of  course 
it  would.  For  this  means  only  the  imaginary  fulfilment  of 
the  political  ideal.  If  God  himself  could  be  induced  to  take 
immediate  charge  of  human  affairs,  man  would  do  well  to 
relinquish  the  task  to  him;  because  by  definition  God  would 
be  the  perfect  ruler.  We  simply  define  the  true  art  of  govern- 
ment, and  then  ascribe  it  to  a  hypothetical  individual.    But 


526 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


this  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  actual  difficulties  and  the 
actual    possibilities    which    confront    mankind.     Unfortu- 
nately the  only  course  open  to  society  is  to  have  some  men 
such  as  they  are,  rule  other  men  such  as  they  are.     The  ruler 
must  be  taken  from  among  the  interested  parties,  from 
among  the  beneficiaries  of  rule.     There  is  no  such  thing,  and 
there  cannot  be  any  such  thing,  as  a  perfectly  disinterested 
ruler.     If  there  were,  there  would  be  no  infallible  means  of 
discovering  him.     Even  a  highly  disinterested  ruler  is  a 
happy  accident  with  a  low  average  of  frequency.     Men  have 
not  unnaturally  come  to  the  conclusion  that  they  cannot 
afford  to  give  authority  irrevocably  to  any  one  man  or  to 
any  class  of  men.    Petition  to  the  clemency  or  indulgence 
of  irresponsible  authority  is  too  uncertain  a  means  of  getting 
one's  claims  recognized.     In  proportion  as  a  man  knows 
what  he  wants  and  is  in  earnest  about  getting  it,  he  finds  it 
expedient  to  possess  some  hold  upon  those  who  rule  him. 
He  regards  himself  as  the  client  of  the  ruler,  and  looks  upon 
public  office  as  a  trusteeship  from  which  the  incumbent  is 
removable  for  cause.    In  this  most  general  sense  all  govern- 
ments are  democratic  in  which  authority  is  effectively  con- 
trolled by  the  aggregate  of  those  whose  interests  are  at  stake. 
The  directness  of  contact  between  the  government  and  its 
cHents,  the  frequency  with  which  the  consent  of  the  governed 
shall  be  obtained,  the  extent  to  which  this  consent  shall  be 
required  in  questions  of  poHcy,  or  confined  to  broader  ques- 
tions of  principle  and  personal  competence  —  these  are  prob- 
lems of  organization  with  which  democracies  must  for  some 
time  continue  to  experiment. 

When  poUtical  power  is  construed  in  this  sense,  it  is  evi- 
dently not  so  independent  of  the  question  of  liberty  as  is 
sometimes  supposed.  It  is  true  that  a  democratic  govern- 
ment may  go  to  great  lengths  in  the  direction  of  paternaUstic 
legislation.  But  it  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world  that 
such  legislation  should  be  the  result  of  free  discussion,  and 
that  the  power  which  enforces  it  should  spring  from  the  very 
interests  which  it  regulates  and  restrains.  Although  there 
may  be  no  interest  with  which  such  legislation  entirely  coin- 


POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 


527 


cides,  every  interest  will  nevertheless  have  counted  in  deter- 
mining the  resultant.     Democracy  does  not  require  that 
any  individual's  will  shall  have  been  the  sole  cause  in  deter- 
mining policy,  but  that  it  shall  have  been  actually  potent. 
It  follows  that  any  single  individual  must  both  assert  himself 
and  submit  himself:  assert  himself  in  the  making  of  policy, 
and  submit  himself  to  the  policy  once  made.     His  right  to 
participate  with  the  rest  in  the  act  of  government  commits 
him  to  accept  the  result  which  is  in  part  of  his  own  making. 
The  justification  of  majority  rule  lies  in  the  fact  that  no  man 
is  permanently  in  the  minority.    Though  he  be  outvoted 
to-day,  his  turn  will  come.     Majorities  are  not  tyrannical 
when  they  are  temporary,  and  are  composed  of  interchange- 
able units. 

It  is  not  essential  to  poUtical  democracy  that  every  in- 
terest should  actively  participate  in  every  poUtical  decision. 
Consent  may  be  passive.  PoUtical  power  is  not  less  effective 
for  being  held  in  reserve.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  difference 
between  being  silent  and  being  gagged.  The  one  thing  that 
is  intolerable  is  that  any  class  of  interests,  such  as  those  of 
women  or  of  wage-earners,  should  be  dependent  upon  the 
gratuity  of  others.  The  sound  motive  of  poUtical  revolution 
is  the  poUtical  disqualification  of  groups  who  are  conscious  of 
a  special  interest,  but  have  no  legal  power  to  make  it  effec- 
tive. The  important  thing  is  that  such  groups  should  have 
the  power,  whether  they  exert  it  or  not.  ^ 

In  pointing  out  the  consistency  of  poUtical  democracy  with 
that  stabiUty  and  order  which  condition  civil  Uberty,  I  do  not 
mean  to  deprecate  change.  It  should  not  J^e  necessary  to 
insist  that  law  and  order  do  not  mean  the  same  thing  as  the 
existing  law  and  order.  But  there  are  many  well-meamng 
persons  who  confuse  them.  Such  persons  feel,  for  example, 
that  chaos  is  at  hand  because  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  obtain 
'^the  good  old-fashioned  servant."  Or  they  think  an  inno- 
vator is  the  same  thing  as  an  anarchist.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
poUtical  and  legal  institutions  exist  largely  in  order  to  facili- 
tate change.  The  democratic  form  of  government  finds  its 
chief  justification  in  enabling  fundamental  and  far-reaching 


528 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


change  to  take  place  in  an  orderly  and  lawful  fashion.  It 
makes  disorder  and  lawlessness  unnecessary  either  for  self- 
respect  or  for  social  reconstruction.  By  its  great  flexibility 
it  renders  readjustments  easy;  and  by  its  wide  representation 
it  makes  it  to  everyone's  interest  to  preserve  the  general  con- 
stitutional forms  that  permit  such  flexibility.  There  was 
never  a  more  spectacular  proof  of  this  than  is  being  witnessed 
at  present,  when  the  whole  social  structure  is  being  renovated 
without  the  least  weakening  of  political  and  legal  authority. 
The  justification  of  poUtical  democracy  Hes,  then,  first  in 
the  requirement  that  government  shall  both  avoid  oppression, 
and  at  the  same  time  secure  Hberty  under  an  orderly  system 
of  law;  second,  in  the  natural  right  of  every  interest  to  be 
taken  account  of;  third,  in  the  general  capacity  of  every 
individual  to  know  his  own  interest  best,  and  to  judge  of  the 
bearing  of  public  policy  on  that  interest;  fourth,  in  the  fact 
that  the  surest  way  of  getting  each  interest  taken  account 
of,  is  to  associate  power  with  interest,  so  that  the  inevitable 
one-sidedness  of  one  man's  judgment  may  in  the  long  run  be 
corrected  by  that  of  others. 

Democracy  in  the  broadest  sense  means  many  things,  some 
good  and  some  bad.  The  same  is  true  of  the  catch-words 
which  democrats  most  frequently  employ.  Liberty  may  be 
only  a  name  for  license.  Equality  may  be  a  cloak  for  maHce 
and  vulgarity.  Popular  rule  may  be  a  means  for  gratifying 
the  greed  for  power.  Democracy  in  any  of  these  senses  is, 
like  tyranny  and  despotism,  a  name  for  bad  government. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  liberty  may  mean  a  just  regard  for 
natural  and  civil  rights.  Equality  may  mean  the  open  door 
of  opportunity,  charitable  fellow  feehng  and  the  spirit  of 
co-operation.  Popular  government  may  mean  self-govern- 
ment, the  guarantee  through  the  wide  distribution  of  power 
that  the  benefits  of  social  order  shall  also  be  widely  dis- 
tributed. Democracy  in  these  senses  is  a  name  for  that 
form  of  social  organization  that  is  both  sound  in  principle 
and  proved  by  experience.  It  is  the  substance  of  Ameri- 
canism. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

THE  AMERICAN  TRADITION  AND  THE  AMERICAN 

IDEAL 


I.    AMERICAN  TRAITS 

There  have  been  three  major  influences  which  have 
moulded  the  American  national  character:  the  racial,  social 
and  political  inheritance  from  Great  Britain;  the  creation  of 
a  new  society  in  a  new  continent  abounding  in  natural  re- 
sources; and  the  later  flow  of  immigration  from  all  quarters 
of  the  globe.  The  third  of  these  influences  I  shall  allude  to 
presently  in  connection  with  the  problem  of  American  na- 
tional unity.  The  first  and  second  in  their  reciprocal  modi- 
fication and  joint  action  are  primarily  responsible  for  what  is 
traditionally  and  proverbially  American. 

The  early  settlers  brought  here  from  Great  Britain  the 
qualities  that  brought  them  here;  and  these  same  qualities 
enabled  them  to  outstay  their  French  rivals  and  to  fix  the 
dominant  moral  tradition.  What  these  qualities  were  is 
well-known  to  all  Americans:  the  Puritan  sobriety,  inde- 
pendence and  self-reliance;  the  habit  of  possessing  one's  in- 
stitutions instead  of  being  possessed  by  them,  combined  with 
sagacity  and  political  genius;  the  fear  of  God  together  with 
a  keen  eye  for  the  main  chance.  But  these  hereditary  traits 
have  from  the  beginning  been  subjected  to  modifying  in- 
fluences. They  have  provided  the  ballast  rather  than  the 
moving  power  of  American  life.  Their  limitations  have 
nowhere  been  more  clearly  recognized  and  vigorously  cen- 
sured than  in  America.  It  was  some  anonymous  American 
who  having  been  reminded  that  the  Puritans  landed  on 
Plymouth  Rock,  said  he  wished  that  Plymouth  Rock  had 
landed  on  the  Puritans! 

The  great  counter-influence  to  the  Puritan  tradition  and 
the  positive  impulse  of  American  life  has  come  from  oppor- 

529 


530 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


tunity.     In  a  letter  addressed  to  the  Governors  of  the  thirteen 
states  on  June  i8, 1783,  General  Washington  wrote  as  follows: 

*'The  citizens  of  America,  placed  in  the  most  enviable  condition, 
as  the  sole  lords  and  proprietors  of  a  vast  tract  of  continent,  com- 
prehending all  the  soils  and  climates  of  the  world,  and  abounding 
with  all  the  necessaries  and  conveniencies  of  hfe,  and  now,  by  the 
late  satisfactory  pacification,  acknowledged  to  be  possessed  of 
absolute  freedom  and  independency;  they  are,  from  this  period, 
to  be  considered  as  the  actors  on  a  most  conspicuous  theatre,  which 
seems  to  be  peculiarly  designed  by  Providence  for  the  display  of 
human  greatness  and  felicity;  here  they  are  not  only  surrounded 
with  everything  that  can  contribute  to  the  completion  of  private 
and  domestic  enjoyment,  but  Heaven  has  crowned  all  its  other 
blessings  by  giving  a  surer  opportunity  for  political  happiness  than 
any  other  nation  has  been  favored  with." 

From  its  birth  this  Republic  has  enjoyed  a  buoyant  and 
sanguine  temper.  Delivered  from  the  oppression  of  the  past, 
and  conscious  of  its  present  possession  of  inexhaustible  re- 
sources, it  has  looked  forward  with  confidence  to  a  future  of 
its  own  making.  From  this  temper  have  sprung  the  most 
evident  American  characteristics,  some  good  and  some  bad. 
From  this  has  sprung  the  American's  belief  in  his  fortunate 
destiny,  a  belief  that  has  often  taken  the  form  of  carelessness, 
prodigality  and  bumptiousness.  It  accounts  for  the  easy 
temper,  the  lack  of  bitterness  that  Mr.  Gerard  alludes  to  in 
the  following  paragraph. 

"In  a  conversation  with  (Ferrero)  ...  I  reminded  him  of  the 
fact  that  both  he  and  a  Frenchman,  named  Huret  .  .  .  had  stated 
in  their  books  that  the  thing  which  struck  them  most  in  the  study 
of  the  American  people  was  the  absence  of  hate.  Ferrero  recalled 
this,  and  in  the  discussion  which  followed  and  in  which  the  French 
novelist.  Marcel  Prevost,  took  part,  all  agreed  that  there  was  more 
hate  in  Europe  than  in  America:  first,  because  the  peoples  of 
Europe  were  confined  in  small  space  and  secondly,  because  the 
European,  whatever  his  rank  or  station,  lacked  the  opportunity 
for  advancement  and  consequently  the  eagerness  to  press  on  ahead, 
and  that  fixing  of  thought  on  the  future,  instead  of  the  past,  which 
formed  part  of  the  American  character."  ^ 

*  My  Four  Years  in  Germany ^  p.  306. 


AMERICAN  TRADITION  AND  IDEAL 


531 


Finding  himself  in  possession  of  vast  natural  resources, 
the  American  has  from  the  beginning  interested  himself  in 
their  exploitation,  and  in  the  productive  use  of  his  ample 
supply  of  raw  materials.  Through  the  wide  distribution  of 
land  and  other  economic  opportunities  these  agricultural  and 
industrial  interests  have  been  popularized.  The  opportunity 
has  been  an  individual  and  not  merely  a  national  oppor- 
tunity. The  virtues  of  the  settler,  of  independent  livelihood 
and  of  business  management  have  ranked  high,  and  some- 
what to  the  disparagement  of  intellectual  and  cultural  pur- 
suits. American  manners  are  free  and  lacking  in  a  nice 
regard  for  form.  There  is  a  spirit  of  equality,  such  as  obtains 
among  frontiersmen  who  have  left  their  privileges  behind, 
and  find  themselves  on  a  common  footing  in  the  presence  of 
hardship  and  adventure.  It  is  this  spirit  that  has  caused  the 
ideal  of  social  democracy,  in  the  sense  of  equal  opportunity, 
to  take  such  deep  root  among  us. 

We  are  accustomed  to  regard  ourselves  as  individualists, 
but  this  judgment  requires  qualification.  It  is  true  that  we 
do  cultivate  and  respect  individual  self-reliance.  The  self- 
made  man,  the  man  who  "works  his  way,"  is  perhaps  the 
most  characteristically  American  form  of  heroism.  But 
except  in  certain  corners  of  the  country  which  are  elsewhere 
suspected  of  Anglo-mania,  there  is  little  respect  for  in- 
dividual eccentricities,  or  for  individual  privacy.  We  are 
accustomed  to  the  social  group  in  which  all  live  together  in 
a  promiscuous  and  boisterous  good  fellowship.  We  like  to 
have  every  man  lay  his  cards  on  the  table.  We  suspect  the 
man  who  keeps  his  own  council ;  we  laugh  at  the  man  who  is 
queer  and  out  of  the  ordinary.  The  mockery  of  the  crowd 
is  a  very  potent  instrument  of  repression.  The  individual 
is  very  defiant  toward  outsiders  if  he  has  his  crowd  with  him, 
but  he  falters  when  he  is  called  upon  to  think  or  act  alone. 
We  must  in  the  light  of  recent  events  admit  that  the  Ameri- 
can public  is  not  especially  interested  in  the  grievances  of 
individuals  or  small  minorities,  or  especially  solicitous  re- 
garding personal  liberty.  We  shrink  from  deliberate  perse- 
cution, and  we  dislike  bloodshed  in  the  abstract.     But  we 


532 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


feel  that  the  man  who  differs  from  the  majority  had  better 
*^shut  up'';  and  that  if  he  chooses  not  to,  the  consequences 
are  his  own  fault.  The  main  thing,  which  we  insist  on  at 
any  price,  is  that  the  majority  should  have  its  way.  This 
may  perhaps  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  while  we  have  had 
to  fight  for  national  independence,  and  for  national  unity, 
we  have  never  had  to  fight  for  individual  liberty,  for  liberty 
of  speech  or  the  liberty  of  the  press.  We  have  enjoyed  these 
liberties  from  the  beginning  and  we  too  readily  take  them  for 
granted.  We  do  not  realize  how  infinitely  precious  they  are; 
and  perhaps  shall  never  come  to  that  realization  until  some- 
body seeks  to  rob  us  of  them.  Another  and  a  more  positive 
explanation  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  our  political 
stability  depends  on  a  temporary  submission  to  majorities. 
Our  political  code  requires  us  to  play  together;  to  join  in 
when  once  the  procession  is  clearly  headed  in  a  certain 
direction.  But  here,  in  our  excessive  regard  for  the  opinion 
of  our  fellows,  and  in  our  comparative  indifference  to  what 
is  original  and  distinctive  in  the  individual,  is  a  symptom  of 
imperfect  health. 

American  humor  tends  to  have  this  inquisitorial  character; 
to  be  too  easily  excited  by  incongruities,  which  are  after  all 
only  differences  from  the  normal  and  commonplace.  We 
have  perhaps  an  excessive  sense  of  humor,  which  sometimes 
leads  us  to  overlook  the  important  thing  which  is  serious  for 
the  sake  of  the  trifling  thing  that  is  amusing.  Our  humor  is 
somewhat  cruel,  too  likely  to  take  the  form  of  the  "practical 
joke."  And  it  is  a  bit  noisy  and  crude.  Its  most  distinctive 
characteristic  is  perhaps  its  shamelessness.  It  is  a  form  of 
candor,  in  which  we  expose  our  defects  to  view,  and  enjoy 
the  surprise  created  by  their  revelation;  which  implies,  of 
course,  that  we  are  not  really  ashamed  of  them.  But  our 
humor  is  equally  an  index  of  what  is  perhaps  the  best  thing 
in  us:  our  disinclination  to  pretend  to  be  any  better  than  we 
are.  If  a  man  shows  any  signs  of  thinking  well  of  himself, 
everybody  else  at  once  begins  to  think  less  well  of  him.  We 
detest  the  airs  and  outward  show  of  superiority.  We  would 
rather  find  it  out  for  ourselves,  than  have  it  thrust  upon  us. 


AMERICAN  TRADITION  AND   IDEAL 


533 


t 


f 


» 


We  think  that  we  are  remarkably  energetic.     That  there 
is  a  great  din  of  industry  and  a  huge  material  achievement 
is  of  course  not  to  be  denied.     On  the  other  hand,  it  cannot 
be  said  that  we  have  made  much  of  little;  that  we  are  pecu- 
liarly gifted  in  thrift,  close  application  and  tenacity.    William 
James  has  reminded  us  that  feeling  busy  may  be  merely  a 
matter  of  nerves  and  bodily  tension,  and  that  it  does  not 
necessarily  imply  efficiency  or  rapidity  of  achievement.     It 
is  safer,  perhaps,  to  say  that  we  are  active,  restless  and  in- 
ventive.    In  an  essay  entitled  ''The  Fallacy  of  the  Young 
Nation,"  ^  Mr.  Chesterton  reminds  us  that  we  must  not  count 
too  complacently  upon  possessing  the  vigor  of  youth.     There 
are  two  senses  of  youth;  one  is  recency,  and  the  other  is 
potentiality  of  growth.     Now  without  doubt  we  are  recent, 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  we  are  immature.     The  hopeful 
quality  of  youth  shows  itself  in  the  heroic  spirit.     But  some 
nations  are  born  without  it,  and  so  are  moribund  from  the 
beginning.     Mr.  Chesterton  suggests  that  our  bustle,  ex- 
citability, and  love  of  novelty  may  be  symptoms  of  prema- 
ture decay.     Our  artists  and  men  of  letters  are  not  notable 
for  the  quality  of  vitality.     ''Is  the  art  of  Mr.  Whistler," 
he  asks,  "a  brave  barbaric  art,  happy  and  headlong?    Does 
Mr.  Henry  James  infect  us  with  the  spirit  of  the  school  boy?  " 
I  cite  this  because,  whether  it  is  true  or  not,  we  must  not 
be  too  comfortable  about  our  destiny.     In  any  case  one  can- 
not always  be  young.     If  we  go  on  to  greater  achievements 
in  the  future,  it  will  not  be  because  we  began  as  recently  as 
the^Eighteenth  Century,  or  because  we  began  with  a  rich 
patrimony,  but  because  we  have  developed  character  and 
learned  wisdom. 

II.    PHILOSOPHICAL  TENDENCIES 

American  philosophy,^  especially  in  its  earlier  stages,  was 
largely  formed  by  influences  that  cannot  be  said  to  reflect 
anything  peculiady  American.  During  the  Seventeenth  and 
Eighteenth  Centuries  most  of  the  various  phases  of  British 

^  In  the  volume  entitled  Heretics. 

2  Cf.  Woodbridge  RUey's  American  Philosophy,  the  Early  Schools, 


534 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


AMERICAN  TRADITION  AND  IDEAL 


535 


and  French  thought  had  their  representatives  on  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic.  Cotton  Mather  and  Jonathan  Edwards  ex- 
pounded the  philosophy  of  Puritan  Calvinism;  Samuel 
Johnson,  a  disciple  of  Berkeley  and  the  first  President  of 
King's  College  in  New  York,  developed  an  empirical  idealism; 
Joseph  Priestley  represented  the  materialism,  and  Thomas 
Paine  the  deism  and  revolutionary  social  philosophy  that 
flourished  in  Great  Britain  and  France  at  the  close  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century.  The  Scotish  realism  of  Reid  and  Sir 
William  Hamilton  was  transplanted  to  America  by  Wither- 
spoon  and  McCosh,  and  at  Princeton  it  became  both  the 
academic  philosophy  and  also  the  recognized  basis  of  ortho- 
dox Presbyterianism.  This  movement  was  paralleled  and 
gradually  superseded  by  the  influence  of  the  Kantian  philos- 
ophy; which  was  first  manifested  in  the  romantic  movement 
known  as  **TranscendentaHsm,"  and  afterwards,  largely 
through  the  leadership  of  W.  T.  Harris,  was  promoted  by  a 
more  scholarly  study  of  Hegel.  When  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  last  century  it  became  the  practice  of  American  students 
to  learn  their  philosophy  in  German  Universities,  Kantian 
idealism  became  the  established  academic  philosophy,  and 
in  America  as  elsewhere  the  main  defense  of  the  spiritualistic 
metaphysics. 

Although  transcendentalism  borrowed  its  inspiration  from 
abroad  it  touched  an  answering  chord  in  American  Hfe,  and 
was  the  first  philosophy  to  stir  the  American  mind  to  original 
self-expression.  This  alliance  of  transcendentalism  and 
Americanism  is  represented  by  Emerson.  Santayana  has 
given  an  excellent  statement  of  Emerson's  historical  sig- 
nificance: 

"The  transcendental  method,  in  its  way,  was  .  .  .  sympathetic 
to  the  American  mind.  It  embodied,  in  a  radical  form,  the  spirit 
of  Protestantism  as  distinguished  from  its  inherited  doctrines;  it 
was  autonomous,  undismayed,  calmly  revolutionary;  it  felt  that 
Will  was  deeper  than  Intellect;  it  focussed  everything  here  and 
now,  and  asked  all  things  to  show  their  credentials  at  the  bar  of  the 
young  self,  and  to  prove  their  value  for  this  latest  born  moment. 
These  things  are  truly  American;  they  would  be  characteristic  of 


f 


any  young  society  with  a  keen  and  discursive  intelligence,  and  they 
are  strikingly  exemplified  in  the  thought  and  in  the  person  of 
Emerson.  They  constitute  what  he  called  self-trust.  .  .  .  Self- 
trust,  like  other  transcendental  attitudes,  may  be  expressed  in 
metaphysical  fables.  The  romantic  spirit  may  imagine  itself  to 
be  an  absolute  force,  evoking  and  moulding  the  plastic  world  to 
express  its  varying  moods.  But  for  a  pioneer  who  is  actually  a 
world-builder  this  metaphysical  illusion  has  a  partial  warrant  in 
historical  fact;  far  more  warrant  than  it  could  boast  of  in  the  fixed 
and  articulated  society  of  Europe,  among  the  moonstruck  rebels 
and  sulking  poets  of  the  romantic  era.  Emerson  was  a  shrewd 
Yankee,  by  instinct  on  the  winning  side;  he  was  a  cheery,  childlike 
soul,  impervious  to  the  evidence  of  evil,  as  of  everything  that  it 
did  not  suit  his  transcendental  individuality  to  appreciate  or  notice. 
More,  perhaps,  than  anybody  that  has  ever  lived,  he  practised  the 
transcendental  method  in  all  its  purity."  ^ 

In  other  words,  Emerson  appealed  in  America  as  Carlyle 
did  in  Great  Britain  to  the  native  spirit  of  self-reliance.  And 
like  Carlyle  he  represented  the  counter-movement  against 
that  utiUtarianism  which  in  an  Anglo-Saxon  community  and 
in  an  age  of  science  must  be  the  most  powerful  current  of 
secular  thought. 

In  its  later  history  American  idealism  like  British  idealism 
has  been  engaged  in  the  attempt  to  employ  the  logic  and 
metaphysics  of  Kantianism  without  paying  the  full  price  in 
the  coin  of  absolutism.  American  idealists  like  their  British 
contemporaries  found  in  idealism  an  answer  to  materialism, 
utilitarianism  and  individualism.  Idealism  meant  the  prior- 
ity of  spirit  to  matter,  the  acknowledgment  of  a  higher  and 
more  universal  good  than  private  satisfaction,  and  the  in- 
terdependence of  individuals  in  the  social  whole.  But  no 
American  thinker  of  repute  has  been  wiUing  to  deny  the  fact 
of  evil,  to  disregard  the  needs  and  prerogatives  of  the  in- 
dividual, to  acknowledge  the  spiritual  authority  of  the  state, 
to  accept  history  as  divine,  or  in  the  name  of  the  Absolute  to 
worship  the  totaHty  of  things  as  they  are.  The  significance 
of  Royce  and  of  Howison  lies  in  their  struggle  to  reconcile 
the  creed  of  freedom,  progress  and  democracy  with  the 

*  Santayana:  Winds  of  Doctrine,  196-197. 


i 


536 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


^' 


AMERICAN  TRADITION  AND  IDEAL 


537 


Kantian  theory  of  knowledge,  which  by  its  own  inherent 
logic  presses  the  mind  in  the  opposite  direction.  This  re- 
mains to-day  the  central  problem  for  those  younger  thinkers 
who  have  drawn  their  inspiration  from  the  same  source. 

Meanwhile  American  philosophy  has  been  enriched  by 
new  and  radical  movements,  which  whatever  one  may  judge 
of  their  merits  and  permanence  are  unquestionably  more 
indigenous.  William  James  and  John  Dewey  were  both 
educated  in  the  tradition  and  under  the  high  prestige  of 
Anglo-British  idealism.  But  they  cast  it  out  of  their  minds, 
root,  stem  and  branch.  They  rediscovered  British  empiri- 
cism and  French  voluntarism;  they  learned  from  the  method 
and  results  of  the  natural  sciences;  and  above  all  they  ac- 
cepted individualism,  experimentalism,  meliorism,  democracy 
and  other  tenets  of  the  popular  creed,  not  as  quaUfying  and 
corrective  influences,  but  as  points  of  departure.  They  have 
not  compromised  with  the  Absolute;  they  have  disowned  it 
altogether.  And  they  have  bequeathed  to  their  disciples  /  y 
the  priceless  boon  of  an  Absolute-less  world. 

Making  every  concession  to  the  idealistic  tradition  that 
the  sentiments  of  reverence,  humihty  and  courtesy  can 
possibly  require,  we  may  recapitulate  the  present  temper  of 
American  philosophy  as  follows.  First,  the  world  we  live  in 
is  more  certainly  many  than  it  is  one.  Though  the  specula- 
tive reason  may  prompt  us  to  conceive  an  organic  whole  in 
which  all  things  are  inevitable  and  for  the  best,  we  cannot 
blind  our  eyes  to  the  evident  fact  that  there  are  irrelevant 

tand  evil  things  whose  irrelevance  and  evil  we  do  not  know 
how  to  explain  away.  This  is  what  is  meant  by  pluralism,  f 
Second,  the  surest  guide  of  conduct  is  the  happiness  and  well-^ 
being  of  sentient  humanity.  |  It  is  a  more  certain  thing  that 
the  murder  of  the  innocent  is  atrocious,  \jthan  that  the  self- 
realization  of  a  state-personality  or  the  great  drama  of  history 
is  sublime.  Though  no  man  is  entitled  to  judge  events  by 
his  own  happiness  alone, ^he  cannot  ignore  his  happiness,  and 
still  less  the  happiness  of  others Jike  himself,  in  the  name 
of  some  unfelt  perfection  which  his  philosophy  invents.  He 
must  start  with  the  fact  that  men  are  without  what  they 


want,  that  men  are  hungry,  sick,  poor,  ignorant,  and  in- 7 
secure,  and  he  cannot  acknowledge  any  ultimate  perfection  \ 
that  does  ^ot  remedy  these  evilsj  This  is  what  is  meant  by  J 
democracy  and  humanity.  Finally,  the  goal  of  hfe  lies  neither 
behind  nor  above,  but  ahead.  The  proper  ground  of  hope  is 
effort  and  resolve.  There  is  no  assurance  that  the  outcome 
of  the  moral  conflict  is  prearranged ;  that  the  moral  struggle 
is  a  sort  of  setting-up  exercise  by  which  the  soul  keeps  itself 
in  spiritual  health,  or  that  it  is  a  play  within  a  play,  which 
contributes  a  spiritual  thrill  or  points  a  spiritual  truth.  Life 
is  no  riddle  to  guess.  It  is  good  with  its  back  to  the  wall, 
fighting  a  real  fight  to  keep  and  strengthen  its  hold  upon 
existence.  The  contest  between  good  and  evil  is  an  irrecon- 
cilable conflict,  not  a  happy  equilibrium  of  counter-balanci^g^ 
forces.  To  enter  this  struggle  on  the  side  of  the  good,  to" 
believe  in  one's  cause  as  a  good  fighting  man  beheves  in  what 
he  fights  for,  this  is  what  is  meant  hy  0th.  Such  is  the 
general  spirit  in  which  Americans  of  this  day  are  moved  to 
undertake  their  duties. 

III.    THE  PERFECTING  OF  DEMOCRACY 

What  Americans  have  been  is  less  important  at  this  junc- 
ture than  what  Americans  mean  to  become.  Indeed  it  may 
be  said  to  be  traditionally  American  to  be  less  interested  in 
tradition  and  more  interested  in  the  live  possibihties  of  the 
present  and  future.  Furthermore,  we  are  happily  less  pre- 
occupied than  other  peoples  with  the  bare  conditions  of 
existence.  We  have  independence,  free  institutions  and 
material  wealth.  These  things  have  come  to  us  more  easily 
than  to  other  peoples.  It  is  therefore  a  point  of  honor  with 
us  to  make  the  best  use  of  our  good  fortune,  and  to  lead  the 
way  to  something  better.  Our  first  duty  is  to  perfect  that 
democracy  to  which  we  are  committed  and  which  we  have 
as  yet  so  imperfectly  realized. 

We  can  start,  I  think,  with  two  leading  ideas  that  are 
generally  accepted,  one  an  ethical  idea  that  sets  the  end,  the 
other  a  political  idea  that  prescribes  the  means.  The  ethical 
idea  I  have  defined  in  the  name  of  social  democracy.    We 


538 


i 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


AMERICAN  TRADITION  AND  IDEAL 


539 


are  generally  agreed  that  the  sound  motives  that  underly  the 
aspiration  to  social  equality  must  be  acknowledged  and  sat- 
isfied. Compassion,  emulation,  self-respect  and  fraternity 
require  that  evils  shall  be  remedied,  opportunity  extended 
and  liberalized,  and  that  both  the  arrogance  of  superiority 
and  the  bitterness  of  inferiority  shall  be  replaced  by  good- 
fellowship  and  brotherly  esteem.  At  the  same  time  we  must 
recognize  and  disown  the  motive  of  envy  that  would  rob  life 
of  excellence  and  of  eminence.  We  want  the  kind  of  frater- 
nity that  values  the  best  things  of  the  mind  and  of  the  spirit, 
without  personal  pride  or  humiliation.  We  all  agree  that 
:  this  is  the  better  s(5rt  of  community  that  we  want  to  live  in; 
and  we  know  that  it  is  humanly  possible,  because  we  have 
experienced  it  in  the  bq^t  human  relations  and  in  the  best 
human  beings  with  whom  we  are  acquainted.\  We  all  reaHze 
furthermore  that  in  the  community  at  large  we  have  not 
yet  attained  to  this  form  of  life. 

The  political  idea,  which  we  have  been  more  slow  to  accept, 
but  which  is  to-day  the  premise  of  all  our  policy,  is  the  idea 
that  we  must  hope  to  attain  this  better  life  mainly  through 
the  agency  of  the  democratic  state.  We  need  a  greater 
national  unity,  and  a  more  constructive  central  government 
which  shall  call  to  its  aid  that  American  administrative  genius 
that  has  hitherto  been  exercised  almost  exclusively  in  the 
field  of  private  enterprise.  It  is  not  with  us  a  question  of 
popularizing  a  government  established  upon  the  principle  of 
class  or  dynastic  supremacy,  but  of  making  more  use  of  a 
government  which  already  derives  its  power  from  the  consent 
of  the  governed  and  is  pledged  to  the  ideal  of  social  democ- 
racy. To  enlarge  and  perfect  the  functions  of  such  a  govern- 
ment is  only  to  carry  through  the  basal  principle  of  our 
poHtical  philosophy,  which  is  that  society  shall  create  the 
institutions  which  it  needs,  and  then  demand  that  they  shall 
serve  the  society  which  creates  them.  t 

There  are  two  great  differences  that  divide  us  and  mar  bur 
democracy,  the  economic  and  the  racial.  Of  these  the 
economic  difference  is  the  more  threatening.  The  extreme 
parties  in  this  conflict  are  the  party  of  possession,  which 


proposes  to  keep,  and  the  party  of  dispossession  which  pro- 
poses to  get.  Both  of  these  parties  are  selfish,  and  in  prin- 
ciple lawless  and  violent.  The  one  has  everything  to  lose  by 
change,  and  resists  it  to  the  uttermost;  the  other  has  every- 
thing to  gain  by  change,  and  is  reckless  and  destructive. 
Each  of  these  parties  regards  the  other  as  its  natural  and 
irreconcilable  enemy.  Each  suspects  the  state  of  siding 
with  the  other  party.  The  lawless  capitalist  accuses  the 
state  of  yielding  to  popular  clamor;  the  lawless  laborer 
accuses  the  state  of  yielding  to  mercenary  intrigue.  Be- 
tween these  extremes  lies  the  great  mass  of  men  who  recog- 
nize the  interdependence  of  capital  and  labor,  who  want  a 
fair  distribution  of  happiness  and  opportunity,  and  who  are 
looking  for  an  enlightened  and  humane  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem. The  state  on  the  whole  possesses  the  confidence  of  this 
public  and  must  retain  and  improve  it  by  adopting  a  just  and 
constructive  social  policy.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that 
extremists  of  both  factions  may  be  brought  into  this  same 
state  of  mind.  The  extreme  party  of  capitalism  is  more 
accessible  to  the  influence  of  persuasion,  being  made  up  of 
men  who  are  accustomed  by  education  and  training  to  take 
a  wider  and  more  dispassionate  view  of  things.  The  ex- 
treme party  of  labor  is  less  amenable  to  such  influence.  Its 
governing  passions,  rooted  in  hardship,  are  more  bitter  and 
tenacious,  and  its  grievances  more  just.  The  quickest 
remedy  for  such  an  attitude  is  prosperity.  Give  them  an 
opportunity  to  prize  and  property  to  protect,  and  they  will 
soon  acquire  loyalty  to  a  social  order  in  which  they  have  a 

stake. 

I,  for  one,  while  I  foresee  far-reaching  changes,  do  not 
foresee  revolution  or  even  grave  disorder.  Our  present  form 
of  government  has  already  stood  the  test  of  civil  and  foreign 
war,  and  of  great  social  changes.  It  is  at  present  one  of  the 
oldest  governments  on  earth.  The  success  of  the  present 
administration  in  vastly  extending  governmental  control 
over  economic  agencies  is,  it  is  true,  due  to  the  emergency  of 
But  this  means  that  we  tolerate  or  even  request  the 


war. 


intervention  of  the  state  when  we  see  clearly  that  conditions 


S40 


THE  PRESENT   CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


require  it.^  The  government  has  not  simply  accumulated 
powers  at  its  own  discretion;  it  has  explained  why,  and  the 
American  people,  seeing  why,  have  been  willing  that  these 
powers  should  be  granted.     Furthermore  there  is  a  very 
vigilant  and  exacting  demand  that  these  powers  shall  be  used 
and  used  effectively  toward  the  ends  for  which  they  were 
obtained.     But  if  the  external  war  is  an  emergency,  so  is  the 
internal  war  of  capital  and  labor.     Perhaps  we  shall  learn 
before  we  get  through  to  regard  them  as  parts  of  one  war. 
But  in  any  case  it  is  entirely  possible,  indeed  it  is  already  a 
present  fact,  that  the  American  people  should  demand  the 
intervention  of  the  state  in  the  permanent  reorganization  of 
agriculture,  industry,  transportation  and  perhaps  education. 
If  the  government  can  succeed  in  making  it  perfectly  plain 
why  it  does  what  it  does,  and  can  succeed  in  doing  well  what 
is  known  to  be  needed,  then  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should 
not  be  both  trusted  and  guided  by  an  intelligent  and  watch- 
ful public  opinion.     A  government  is  paternalistic  and  un- 
democratic in  so  far  as  it  treats  the  people  as  its  wards  and 
claims  to  know  what  is  good  for  them  better  than  they  know 
it  themselves.     Hobhouse  tells  us  that  "the  principal  sphere 
of  the  state  .  .  .  appears  to  be  in  securing  those  common 
ends  in  which  uniformity  or,  more  generally,  concerted  action 
is  necessary."  ^    In  a  democracy  the  common  end  and  the 
common  necessity  must  be  commonly  recognized,  and  the  \ 
state  must  be  asked  to  serve  them. 
The  second  difference  that  divides  us  is  the  racial  differ- 
ce.     To  cure  this  we  need,  and  are  already  obtaining,  a 
heightened  sense  of  national  unit^  We  cannot  hope  for, 
and  we  do  not  want,  racial  purity.  '  There  is  no  stock  among 
us  that  can  claim  ascendancy.     Such  an  ascendancy,  even 
if  it  were  possible,  would  impoverish  us.     We  want  every 
immigrant  who  comes  among  us  to  bring  from  his  home  land 
the  best  things  that  he  has  known  and  valued  there.     We  do 
not  want  him  to  empty  himself  and  then  fill  himself  instead 
with  the  commonplaces  and  vulgarities  of  the  streets.     We 
want  him  to  keep  what  he  brings  and  to  share  it  with  the 
*  Social  Evolution  and  Political  Theory,  p.  195. 


AMERICAN  TRADITION  AND  IDEAL 


ence. 


541 


{ 


rest  of  us.     We  want  him  to  cherish  the  tradition  of  the  old 
country,  and  to  contribute  that  tradition  to  the  making  of 
the  new.^   But  for  the  present  and  future  we  want  him  to  be 
an  American  without  any  reservations.     We  cannot  tolerate 
an  alliance  secret  or  open  between  those  who  live  among  us 
and  any  foreign  political  entity.     To  this  end  it  is  necessary 
that  every  immigrant  should  at  once  learn  the  English  lan- 
guage and  that  this  should  be  the  mother  tongue  of  his 
children.     Americans  must  speak  and  read  and  think  in  the 
common  and  communicable  terms,  and  so  become  genuine 
parts  of  the  one  spiritual  community.     Nationality  does  not 
contradict  the  purpose  of  American  Hfe;  on  the  contrary,  in 
nationalism  Hes  the  hope  of  American  Hfe.     For,  as  we  have 
seen,  nationahty  is  a  conscious  bond,  a  moral  unity,  that  can 
niake  one  people  out  of  different  localities,  different  races  and 
different  economic  interests.     There  is  no  other  bond  that  is 
capable  of  uniting  the  Atlantic,  the  Pacific  and  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley,  white  men  and  blacks,  North  Europeans  and 
South  Europeans,  farmers  and  industrial  workers,  laborers 
and  capitalists. 

It  is  true  that  nationality  has  its  abuses;  but  every  useful 
thing  has  its  abuses.  It  is  possible  to  drink  too  much  water, 
or  breathe  too  much  fresh  air,  or  devote  oneself  excessively 
to  the  enjoyment  of  literature  and  fine  art.  If  we  were  to 
abandon  every  form  of  Hfe  that  is  capable  of  abuse  or  excess, 
we  should  have  to  give  up  living  altogether.  The  only 
possible  course  of  action  is  to  use  the  necessary  and  good 
things  wisely  and  well.  The  abuse  of  nationalism  is  state- 
fanaticism.  It  springs  from  the  blind  worship  of  symbols 
and  figures  of  speech.  In  a  sense  the  American  nation  is  one 
and  indivisible,  one  will,  one  purpose,  one  object  of  loyalty. 
The  sentiment  of  patriotism  symbolizes  this  unity  by  the 
flag  or  by  the  authoritative  acts  of  state.  It  is  natural  and 
easy  for  the  weak  and  headlong  mind  to  conceive  this  unity 
as  something  apart  from  the  will  and  judgment  of  individ- 
uals, as  something  of  a  superior  order  that  may  property  dis- 
regard  individuals  for  higher  reasons  of  its  own.  This  is  a 
sort  of  glorious  nonsense;  and  it  is  important  that  most  of  us 


542 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


most  of  the  time  should  resist  the  glory  and  be  shrewdly 
aware  of  the  nonsense.  The  simple  truth  is  this:  that  there 
is  a  national  will  when  and  in  so  far  as  individuals  happen  to 
agree  on  something.  The  national  will  is  the  same  sort  of 
thing,  except  in  extent,  as  the  Mormon  will  or  the  will  of  the 
Daughters  of  the  American  Revolution.  A  national  will 
that  coerces  the  wills  of  the  individuals  who  compose  the 
nation,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms;  or  it  is  a  nonentity 
coercing  a  reality.  And  the  same  is  true  with  a  national  will 
that  claims  the  submission  and  allegiance  of  individuals;  if 
there  were  not  already  such  submission  and  allegiance  there 
would  be  no  national  will  to  claim  them.  Any  individual 
can  in  some  measure  make  or  unmake  the  national  will  by  his 
consent  or  his  dissent. 

The  nation  is  not  then  made  of  a  superior  substance.  It 
is  just  you  and  I  and  others  of  our  fellows  agreeing  on  some- 
thing. First  of  all  we  agree  to  support  and  use  a  common 
government  and  system  of  laws  and  to  amend  these  by 
methods  which  they  themselves  provide  for.  Beyond  that 
we  agree  that  we  need  one  another  in  all  human  ways,  from 

^  providing  for  our  material  wants  and  physical  security,  to 
K  the  saving  of  our  souls.    And  we  resolve  to  work  out  a  com-"' 

i  mon  life  together:  accepting  the  decision  of^the  majority  in  a 
loyal  and  sportsmanlike  manner  while  the  game  is  on,  and 
then,  if  we  so  wish,,  endeavoring  to  amend  the  rules  at  duly 
appointed  times.  Stich  a  nationality,  while  it  limits  every 
man,  need  n^t  in  principle  oppress  any  man.  It  is  consistent 
with  self-respect;  and  provides  that  orderly  and  mutual 
mode  of  life  without  which  it  is  impossible  thatjnore  than 
one  man  should^be  hee  in  the  world  at  the  same  time. 

rV.    NATIONALITY  AND  WORLD-PEACE 

There  is  a  second  abuse  of  nationality  which  is  responsible 
for  the  present  predicament  of  mankind.  Patriotism  may 
reach  a  pitch  of  infatuation  that  blinds  its  devotees  to  the 
humanity  that  lies  beyond,  and  breeds  a  bigoted  and  ruthless 
determination  to  impose  the  national  will  on  alien  nations. 

I  have  recently  been  told  the  story  of  a  Buddhist  monk  who 


V. 


AMERICAN  TRADITION  AND  IDEAL 


i 


543 


was  discovered  by  a  follower  in  the  act  of  eating  fish.  As 
eating  fish  was  contrary  to  the  established  code,  the  follower 
expressed  his  surprise  and  asked  for  an  explanation.  Where- 
upon something  like  the  following  colloquy  occurred: 

Monk:  "You  believe  that  I  am  a  saintly  man,  and  that  I  shall 
become  a  Buddha?'* 

Follower:  *'I  have  ever  regarded  you  as  a  Buddha-to-be." 
Monk:  "Well,  then,  smce  what  I  eat  enters  into  my  blood  arid 
becomes  a  part  of  me,  this  fish  which  would  otherwise  remain 
merely  a  fish,  will  by  my  eating  it  some  day  become  Buddha." 

It  is  from  similariy  high  motives  that  Germany  proposes  to 
consume  Couriand,  Livonia,  Lithuania  and  Esthonia  at  one 
gulp.  To  be  sure  such  wholesale  carniverousness  is  contrary 
to  the  accepted  code.  But  that  is  only  because  most  people 
are  blind  to  the  higher  reason.  These  petty  states  which 
would  otherwise  be  no  better  than  themselves,  may  by 
assimilation  become  part  of  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  holy 
nation,  of  the  "present  bearer  of  the  worid-spirit."  If 
nations  knew  what  was  really  good  for  them,  instead  of  look- 
ing  for  the  exit,  they  would  crowd  around  and  ask  to  be 
eaten. 

Now  this  diseased  nationality  which  has  broken  the  peace 
and  threatens  the  safety  of  the  worid,  is  no  more  necessary 
than  fanaticism  or  paranoia  is  necessary.  If  it  is  possible 
to  unite  a  nation  in  an  insane  purpose,  it  is  certainly  no  less 
possible  to  unite  a  nation  in  a  sane  purpose.  If  a  people  can 
be  united  by  the  idea  of  imposing  itself  on  humanity,  it  can 
be  united  by  the  idea  of  serving  humanity.  This  idea  has 
become  and  must  remain  a  part  of  our  national  will.  The 
continental  isolation  of  America,  like  the  insular  isolation  of 
England,  is  a  thing  of  the  past.  America  remains  a  land  of 
opportunity,  but  it  is  now  no  longer  merely  the  opportunity 
of  developing  wealth  and  free  institutions  for  ourselves.  We 
still  enjoy  a  certain  detachment  from  the  political  affairs  of 
Europe,  in  the  sense  that  we  have  no  axe  to  grind,  no  old 
scores  to  pay.  We  are  free  from  the  embarrassments  and 
suspicions  of  intriguing  diplomacy.    But  it  is  a  freedom  to 


J 


544 


THE  PRESENT  CONFLICT  OF  IDEALS 


use,  not  a  freedom  to  enjoy.  We  are  free  to  select  the  part 
we  are  to  play,  and  to  lead  the  way  toward  the  establishment 
of  a  new  order  in  which  by  the  united  force  of  all  nations 
each  nation  shall  be  guaranteed  the  opportunity  of  living  its 
own  life. 

Our  President  has  proclaimed  to  the  world  that  the  first 
step  in  this  crusade  is  the  decisive  defeat  of  ''this  intolerable 
Thing  of  which  the  masters  of  Germany  have  shown  us  the 
ugly  face,  this  menace  of  combined  intrigue  and  force,  which 
we  now  see  so  clearly  as  the  German  power,  a  Thing  without 
conscience  or  honor  or  capacity  for  covenanted  peace/'     You 
and  I  and  all  of  us  agree  with  him;  and  through  our  united 
wills  this  purpose  has  become  our  present  national  purpose. 
In  adopting  this  purpose  we  retract  no  tenet  whatsoever  of 
our  democratic  creed.     There  are  those  who  declare  that 
war  is  inconsistent  with  democracy.     But  what  kind  of  a 
democratic  faith  is  that?     It  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  de- 
mocracies cannot  be  chivalrous  or  strong;  that  they  cannot 
use  power  for  good,  or  exert  themselves  to  live.     It  is  equiv- 
alent to  saying  that  democracies  cannot  exist.     If  I  were 
called  upon  to  choose  between  an  autocracy  that  could 
bravely  serve  mankind  in  its  hour  of  need,  or  defend  itself 
against  its  enemies,  and  a  democracy  that  must  stand  idly  i 
by  while  the  wicked  triumph,  or  beg  its  life  at  the  indulgence 
of  the  strong,  I,  for  one,  would  prefer  to  live  in  an  autocracy. 
But  I  do  not  believe  that  democracy  is  so  poor  and  helpless 
a  thing.     When  the  first  drafted  men  were  received  into  the 
army  on  September  3, 191 7,  President  Wilson  addressed  them 
as  ''soldiers  of  freedom,"  and  said: 

"Let  it  be  your  pride  ...  to  show  all  men  everywhere  not  only 
what  good  soldiers  you  are,  but  also  what  good  men  you  are,  keep- 
ing yourselves  fit  and  straight  in  everything  and  pure  and  clean 
through  and  through.  Let  us  set  for  ourselves  a  standard  so  high 
that  it  will  be  a  glory  to  live  up  to  it  and  then  let  us  live  up  to  it 
and  add  a  new  laurel  to  the  crown  of  America." 

Let  us,  then,  ask  and  expect  this  great  thing  of  ourselves:  to 
be  good  soldiers  and  at  the  same  time  to  be  both  the  embodi- 


AMERICAN  TRADITION  AND  IDEAL 


( 


f 


545 


/■/ 


ment  and  the  champions  of  our  democratic  creed.     Nothing 
short  of  this  will  prove  democracy. 

We  cannot  alter  this  fundamental  fact  of  life,  that  in  the 
great  crises  he  who  is  not  for  the  good  is  against  it.  This, 
according  to  William  James,  is  the  substance  of  religion. 
"Where  our  relations  to  an  alternative  are  practical  and 
vital,"  if  we  do  not  affirm  and  act,  we  virtually  deny  and  fail. 
"There  are  .  .  .  inevitable  occasions  in  life  when  inaction 
is  a  kind  of  action,  and  must  count  as  action,  and  when  not 
to  be  for  is  to  be  practically  against;  and  in  all  such  cases 
strict  and  consistent  neutrality  is  an  unattainable  thing."  ^ 
The  present  is  such  an  occasion.  Democracy  and  the  future 
peace  of  the  world  are  at  stake.  For  all  we  know  this  is  the 
crucial  struggle  in  which  their  fate  is  to  be  decided.  Let  no 
man  beguile  you  into  thinking  that  they  can  be  had  by  spon- 
taneous good  will  or  gentle  persuasion.  They  are  going  to 
be  won  or  lost  according  as  their  friends  or  their  enemies  are 
the  stronger.  And  their  friends  are  not  those  who  merely 
profess  them  or  sigh  for  them,  but  those  who  take  into  their 
hands  the  necessary  weapons  and  go  forth  to  fight  for  them. 

*  Wm  to  Bdieve,  and  Other  Essays,  pp.  54,  55. 


Si 


INDEX 


'I 


! 


J 


i; 


it 


Activism,  207,  331-347 
Adams,  Brooks,  515 
Agnosticism,  54-57,  190-192 
Alsace-Lorraine,  391,  441-442,  464 
Altruism,  179-180 
American  Ideals,  497-545 
American  Thought,  533-537 
American  Traits,  529-533 
Aristocracy,  165-167, 169-172,  261- 

263 
Art,  50-51,  337,  414 

Bacon,  Francis,  58-59 

Balfour,  Arthur,  25 

Barr^s,  441 

Behaviorism,  378 

Benn,  a.  W.,  481 

Bergson,  295,  348-363,  455 

Bernhardi,  von,  426 

Biology,  301-303,  332-334;  see  also 

Evolution,  Darwin 
Bosanquet,  Bernard,  227-228,  231, 

232,  246-250,  256-258,  261-262, 484 
BouTROUX,  fimile,  288, 345, 458,  464- 

465 
Bradley,  A.  C,  264 
Bradley,  F.  H.,  490 
British  Thought,  479-496 
Brunetiere,  149,  288-289,  457 
BuissoN,  Ferd.,  12 
BussELL,  F.  W.,  203,  213-214 
Byron,  52 

Carlyle,  340,  485-488 
Carri^re,  346 

Carver,  T.  N.,  136, 139-140, 141, 143 
Chesterton,  221,  533 
Chevrillon,  467-468,  472-473 
Christl\nity,    8,    75,    89,    158-160, 

180,  224,  302-303,  402,  499 
Clifford,  W.  K.,  39,  48-49,  114 
CoMTE,  111-112,  453-454,  460-461 
Conrad,  Joseph,  11,  33 


Conscience,  176-178,  492-493 
Consciousness,  376-380 
Cosmopolitanism,  106-111,  167-169 
Crawley,  Ernest,  302-303 
Creighton,  J.  E.,  243 

Darwin,  24,  127-128,  132-149,  151- 

154,  425-426 
Davidson,  Thomas,  205 
Decadence,  51-52,  132-135 
Deism,  175 
Delbos,  Victor,  455 
Democracy,  101-106,  461-462,  497- 

528,  537-542 
Descartes,  450-454,  455,  45^ 
Dewey,  John,  390,  420-421 
Dreyfus  Case,  444-445 
Dualism,  221-225 
Durkheim,  82-86,  114 

Economics,  90-93,  95-99,   107-109, 

135 
Egoism,  77,  291-293,  404-408 
Emerson,  33,  534-535 
Empiricism,  46,  63-^7,  479-482 
Energism,  334 
English     Thought,     see     British 

Thought 
English  Traits,  423,  466-478 
Ethics,  63-67, 122-124, 132-149, 154- 

158,    175-183,   195-196,   202-204, 

221-225,   235-240,    379,    419-421, 

459-461,  476-478,  491-496 
Eugenics,  134 

Evil,  Problem  of,  214-216,  246-250, 

326-330 
Evolution,  116-131,  357-359 

Faith,  183,  298-315 

Fatalism,  97,  98,  249 

Fechner,  195, 196-197 

Ferri,  Enrico,  97-98, 99-100, 147-148 

Fichte,  226,  231,  235,  405-406,  432 


547 


t 


548 


INDEX 


INDEX 


549 


FoAKEs- Jackson,  F.  J.,  483-484 
France,  Anatole,  35-36 
Francke,  Kuno,  150,  252,  406-407 
Freedom,    183,    213-214,     236-237, 

322-326,  351-353,  503 
French  Revolution,  505,  517-518 
French  Thought,  450-465 
French  Traits,  434-449 

Gardner,  Percy,  216 

Gerard,  James  W.,  409-410,  530 

German  Traits,  391,  398-416,  543 

Germany,  168,  1 71-172,  252-253 

GoBLOT,  387 

God,  Conceptions  of ,  56, 176-177, 183, 

201,    214-218,    304-305,    313-315, 

326-330,  360-363 
Green,  T.  H.,  488-489 
GuYAu,  343-344,  345-346 

Haeckel,  Ernst,  38-39,  146-147,  194 
Hardy,  Thomas,  220 
Harrison,  Frederic,  11 2-1 13,  497 
Hay,  Ian,  468,  474 
Hegel,  93,  96,  226,  261,  278 
History,  78-79,  95-99,  278-280,  321 

HOBBES,  27,  76 

Hobhouse,  L.  T.,  61-62 

Holt,  E.  B.,  336 

Howison,  G.  H.,  198,  203-205,  211- 

213,  214,  216,  2x8,  365 
Humanism,  436-440 
Humanity,    106-115,   392-395,   465, 

542-545 

HUNEKER,  J.  G.,  22 

Huxley,  23,  29-30,  1 29-131 

Ibsen, 337 

Idealism,  8,  197-200,  287-290,  457- 

458,  482-491,  535-536 
Idealism,    Absolute,    200,    218-219, 

220-280,  375,  417-423,  490-491 
Idealism,  British,  484-491 
Idealism,  Personal,  200,  201-219 
Imagination,  41-44 
Imitation,  79-81 
Immortality,  183,  196-197,  211-213, 

280,  320,  359-360 
Imperialism,  495 
Individualism,     124-126,     21 1-2 14, 

317-322,  488-491 


Instrumentalism,  287-294 
Intellectualism,  205-210,  243,  281- 

297,  450-454 
Internationalism,  107-109,  267-278 

James,  William,  185-186,  299,  300, 

313-315,  316,  318-328,  334,  339, 
360,  533,  545 

jASRkSf  93 

Kant,  180-183,  191,  201-202,  208, 
219,  220-234,  237,  285,  287-290, 
304,  400,  419,  420,  431 

Keyser,  C.  J.,  38,  57 

KiDD,  Benjamin,  134,  136-137,  140, 
141-142,  147,  301 

KULTUR,  391,  411,  424 

LaPlace,  23 

Laveleye,  91,  383 

Lee,  Vemon,  312 

Leslie,  T.  E.  Cliffe,  78-79,  501-502 

L6vy-Bruhl,  66 

Liberty, 513-519 

Love  JOY,  A.  O.,  295 

Lux,  J.  A.,  406,  431,  433 

Macdonald,  J.  Ramsay,  92,  107-108 

Maeterlinck,  40-41,  185 

Maritain,  Jacques,  455 

Marx,  Kari,  93-100 

Materialism,  23-26 

Meinecke,  Fr.,  418,  421-422,  431 

Meliorism,  326 

Meyer,  Ed.,  421 

Militarism,  64-65, 470-471, 485-488, 

493 
Mill,  J.  S.,  114-115,  330 
MrvART,  517 
Modernism,  22,  310-313 
Monism,  244,  227-229 
Moore,  George,  73-74 
Moralism,  28-30 

Nationalism,  7,  425-427 
Nationality,  258-260,  263-265,  381- 

397,  462-465,  541-545 
Natorp,  Paul,  411 
Nature,  36-41,    129-131,    193-195, 

208,  218-219,  221-225,  293-294 
Naumann,  Fr.,  426-427 


"i 


Nietzsche,  150-172,  239,  284,  292, 

338,  340-341,  402,  427-428,  430 
NoRDAu,  Max,  51 

Optimism,  179-180,  235-250 

Panpsychism,  192-197,  198 
Pearson,  Kari,  139 
P6guy,  Charies,  444-445 
Pessimism,  31-36 
Phenomenalism,  188-192,  197 
Philosophy,  3-4 
Plato,  261,  371-372 
Pluralism,   204-205,  316-330,  357- 

359 
Politics,  428-430,  494-496,  513-528, 

538-542,  see  The  State 
Positivism,  54 

Pragmatism,  8, 186,  281-315, 334-335 
Pringle-Pattison,  a.  Seth,  206,  239, 

241-242 
Progress,    57-62,    84-86,    132-140, 

267-280,  345-347 
Psychologism,  69-74 
Puritanism,  529 

Quietism,  350-351 

Rashdall,  Hastings,  207,  211 
Realism,  50,  364-380 
Reason,  10-20,  281-297 
Religion,   67-69,   99-100,    111-115, 
141,    158-160,    184-187,    196-197, 

298-315,  345,  379-380 
Rey,  Abel,  298 

RiTSCHL,  Albrecht,  309-310 

Rodin,  52-53,  337 

RoLLAND,  Romain,  52,  53,  311-312, 

340,  342-343,  344-345,  405,  415, 

431, 435,  438-439,  442,  443 
Romanticism,  50,  233-234,  285-287 
Rousseau,  179,  453,  460 
Royce,  Josiah,  267-271 
RuMELiN,  Gustav,  263 
Russell,  Bertrand,  25,  41-43,  229, 

347,  367 
Russia,  516 

Sabatier,  Paul,  307-308,  380,  401, 
442,  444,  457 


Salter,  W.  M.,  151 

Santayana,  George,  37-38,  43-44,  49, 

199,  233,  312-313,  390,  404,  414- 

415,  534-535 
Schopenhauer,  32 

Science,  22,  45-62,  101-106,  iio-iii, 

365-368 
Self-realization,  237-240,  263-265, 

419-421,  494 
Simmel,  169 

Socialism,  87-100,  146-149 
Society,    75-86,    122-124,    138-140, 

165-167,  445-449,  460-461 
SoREL,  Georges,  306-307,  341-342 
Sorley,  W.  R.,  242 
Spencer,  Herbert,  55-56,  1 21-126 
State,  The,  86,  182,   251-266,  386, 

421-423,  461-465 
Strindberg,  21,  70,  162 
Sunday,  "Billy,"  308-309 
Syndicalism,  296,  306-307,  341 

Theism,  214-218 
Thomson,  James,  34,  37 
Time,  360-361 
Treitschke,  429,  464 
Troeltsch,  E.,  237,  399-400,  402- 
403, 418-419, 420,  428-429, 462-463 
Tufts,  J.  H.,  346-347 
Tyndall,  56-57 
Tyrrell,  George,  3 10-3 11 

Value,  230-232,  240-246,  307-309, 

368-370 
Veblen,  Thorstein,  14 
Vitalism,  332-334,  353-356 
Voltaire,  175,  460 
Voluntarism,  205-210,  454-459 
Von  Hugel,  Fr.,  404,  407-408,  413, 

432 

Wallas,  Graham,  11,  296 

War,  267-280 

Ward,  James,  204,  207,  208,  215,  217 

Washington,  530 

Wells,  H.  G.,  329,  380 

Wendell,  B.,  438,  447 

Whitman,  Walt,  40 

Wilson,  President,  15,  544 


F.  h.  gilson  company,  boston,  mass. 


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